Vue de L'Hotel de Ville de Marseille, et d'une Partie du Port.
Description
Vue optic of the Hotel de Ville in Marseilles showing victims of the bubonic plague. The Great Plague of Marseilles (1720) was the last significant European outbreak of the plague. The disease arrived in the port on a merchant ship, the Grand-Saint-Antoine, which had travelled from Sidon in Lebanon after visiting Smyrna, Tripoli and Cyprus. During the voyage, several members of the crew, including the ship’s surgeon, fell ill and the ship was refused entry at the Italian port of Livorno before arriving in Marseille and being placed in quarantine. The disease spread a few days later, hospitals were overrun and mass graves were quickly filled. Eventually, attempts to control the outbreak by the public authorities failed and bodies began piling up in the streets. The outbreak resulted in more than 100,000 people dying and decimated the Marseilles population by more than half.
Date
C1760
Artist
Artist unknown
Image Size
245mm × 440mm
Condition
Overall age toning, otherwise in good condition.
Technique
Vue Optic, original hand coloured copper engraving.
Vue perspective de la Carriere de Nancy du cote du Midi.
Description
Vue Optic of the Place de la Carriere in Nancy looking towards Héré’s Arc de Triomphe and Stanislas Place from the Palais du Gouverneur. The squares and surrounding buildings were commissioned by Stanis³aw I Leszczyñski and designed by the royal architect Emmanuel Héré de Corny as a way of connecting the old medieval town of Nancy with the new town built under Charles III in the seventeenth century. It also linked the two existing handsome buildings, the Hotel de Ville and the Hotel de Gouvernement.
Date
C1760
Artist
Artist unknown
Image Size
285mm × 405mm
Condition
In good condition.
Technique
Vue Optic, original hand coloured copper engraving.
George Braun and Franz Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cities of the World) revolutionised the view of the world when it was first published. It included over 450 town plans with all their buildings depicted, and to add further interest, costumed figures occupy the foreground of most.
Architectural and topographical illustrator. He was born in London in 1781 and was articled to the younger Thomas Malton. Wild was a careful delineator of Gothic cathedrals and colleges and was very influential. He was elected AOWS in 1809 and OWS in 1812 and was Treasurer and Secretary in 1833. Increasing blindness caused his resignation in that year.
