The painter Maria Cosway was a frequent subject for the drawings and prints of her husband Richard, and in the first three prints she is posed and dressed in the manner of a Rubens painting. But the social success of the Cosways, and their claiming of the mantle of the old masters, aroused the resentment of some of their fellow artists: the burlesque of Bartolozzi's print shows Maria with a deranged expression and her surname changed to 'Costive', meaning 'constipated'.

Cat. 110–113