Salmacis et Hermaphrodite - Original Etching by Bernard Picart - 1742 1742

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Black and white etching on wire rod paper, representing the Greek myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Wonderful plate with very … Read more Black and white etching on wire rod paper, representing the Greek myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Wonderful plate with very fresh impression and a beautiful use of chiaroscuro, from the volume “Le Temple des Muses”, published in Amsterdam in 1742 by Zacharias Chatelain. Capture (under the image) and author inscribed: ''B. Picart del. 1731'' under the frame engraved, on the lower-left margin. In excellent conditions, except for a usual light yellowing of the margins and some light vertical folds on the right margin in correspondence of the binding a little black ink stain on the lower margin and the inscription lightly discolored. The engraved image is in perfect conditions. Le Temple des Muses was an illustrated book of Ovid's more popular fables and other Greek myths published in 1733 in Dutch (Tempel der Zanggodinnen), in 1738 in English, and in 1742 in French by Zacharias Chatelain. The engravings had captions in four languages: French, English, German, and Dutch. The wonderful sixty plates engraved by Bernard Picart were a sort of fashionable mythological compendium, useful in the eighteenth century, when the fascination with Greek and Roman antiquity followed the systematic excavation of the ruins at Pompeii and Herculaneum in southern Italy; and after 1750 a neoclassical style dominated all artistic fields. Bernard Picart (Paris, 1673 – Amsterdam, 1733) French engraver best known for his book-illustrations, including the Bible and Ovid. His most famous work is Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, published from 1723 to 1743 and was defined: ''an immense effort to record the religious rituals and beliefs of the world in all their diversity as objectively and authentically as possible'' by Jonathan I. Israel. See less