Title
LE GRAND THEATRE DES ALPES ET GLACIERS : Dedie_ aux Amateurs des Merveilles de la Nature.
Creator
Wolf, Caspar, 1735-1783, artist.
Publication details
[Paris] : [Se vend a_ Paris rue des 2 Portes St. Sauveur chez Mr. Graff. A.P.D.R.], [1785]
Physical details
1 print : hand-coloured etching ; sheet 28.9 x 33.6 cm, on support 41 x 51.7 cm.
Description
A group of two women and three men stand before an easel at the edge of a precipice, while two other men holding a book contemplate a rainbow formed above a waterfall at left and a draughtsman depicts an Alpine road and some wooden cabins next to another waterfall at right, with a caravan crossing a bridge, mountains and glaciers in the background.
Place
Switzerland
Additional information
Bound in a volume with title-page, preface by Albrecht von Haller, introduction, explanation of the plates (7 pages of text), frontispiece with Henzi's dedication to the King hand-written on the mount, and nineteen hand-coloured views framed by black lines and pasted on blue gilded mounts. The plates relate to a work first commissioned by publisher Wagner with a text by Jacob Samuel Wyttenbach in about 1776. The project, consisting of forty-two plates, was interrupted by Wagner's death in 1782 and continued in 1785 by Henzi and Yntema. This view, closely related to the engraving illustrating the preface, is based on a painting ('Das grosse panorama der Alpen und Gletscher') by Caspar Wolf now in a Swiss private collection (see B. Wismer et al., Caspar Wolf. Gipfelstu_rmer Zwischen Aufkla_rung und Romantik, exh. cat., Du_sseldorf, 2009, no. 59, pp. 97 and 180 and W. Raeber, Caspar Wolf 1735-1783. Sein Leben und Sein Werk, Frankfurt a.M., Salzburg and Munich, 1979, cat. no. 248).
Other persons
Henzi, Rudolph Samuel, 1732-1803, publisher.
Shelfmark
Maps 8.Tab.c.6.