Les Enfers, from "Le Temple des Muses"

Black and white etching on wire rod paper, representing  a damnation scene in the Hell . 

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"  engraved   under the frame, on the lower left margin. In very good conditions, except for a usual light yellowing of the margins and some light vertical folds on the right margin in correspondence of the binding, some foxings on the margins (beyond the marginal line), three minor stains on the right margin and a little abrasion of paper on the lower right margin. The engraved image is in perfect conditions. 

Le Temple des Muses was an illustrated book of Ovid's most 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, the Neoclassical style dominated all artistic fields.

Bernard Picart  (Paris, 1673 – Amsterdam, 1733), French engraver 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.