Bellona

Étienne Delaune worked in the tradition of the Fountainebleau school, named for the decorative program begun in the 1530s at Francis I's palace near Paris. The principal artists were Italian, well versed in ancient grotesques. Delaune used their ideas to develop a unique serpentine style of grotesque, packed with his own marvelous hybrid creatures. This print of Bellona, the Roman goddess of war, would have provided the design (likely inlaid with silver or gold) for armor or a gunstock.