Six Suites of Engravings

Something discovered following another delve through the collections of etchings and engravings at the Internet Archive where a frustrated search for one subject turns up something else. This 1549 folio of architectural engravings is credited to architect and designer Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (1510–1584), and the plates are based on earlier renderings by Agostino Veneziano and Hieronymus Cock, he of the incredible map of the Americas. Among the details of columns and caryatids there’s a series of the kind of imaginary perspective views I always like to see, lots of sparsely-populated courtyards in various states of ruin. It’s easy to imagine these prospects being transformed into scenarios from Paul Delvaux or Giorgio de Chirico after a suitable change of lighting.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive