Illustrated frontispiece from "Le Temple des Muses"

Black and white etching on wire rod paper.

Illustration from the volume “ Le Temple des Muses ”, published in Amsterdam in 1742 by Zacharias Chatelain. In good conditions, except for a usual yellowing of the margin, a light vertical fold on the right margin and a little rip along this fold on the lower right margin, some minor stains and two imperceptible holes on the higher margin. 

This was an illustrated book of Ovid's more popular fables 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 artists involved were Michel de Marolles, Bernard Picart ,Jacques   Favereau , Abraham van Diepenbeeck and Cornelis Bloemaert.  A facsimile of the Dutch version was published in 1968.

The sixty engraved plates by Bernard Picart and others were a sort of fashionable mythological compendium , useful in 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 , appearing 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.