Schröckenvolle Feurersbrunst welche zu Neu Yorck von denen Americanern in der Nache von 19. Herbst Monath 1776 angeleget–Representation du Feu terrible a Nouvelle Yorck, que les Americains allume pendant la Nuit du 19. Septembre 1776 (Representation of the terrible fire at New York, that the Americans lit during the night of September 19, 1776)
Artist and engraver Franz Xavier Habermann German
Publisher Academie Imperiale, Augsburg German
Not on view
An imagined reconstruction of the fire that ravaged Manhattan during the British siege in September 1776, as part of the American Revolutionary War. Flames are shown engulfing large, elegant buildings along a long street that may be intended to represent Broadway, as skirmishes take place and figures flee with their belongings. The architecture is derived from European sources and the print is part a series engraved in Augsburg and sold internationally. Such prints were known as Perspective Prints, or Vues d'optique in French, and Guckkastenbilder or Perspektivansichten in German. They were intended to be viewed through an optical device called a perspective glass or zograscope that contains a concave lens and a mirror that reversed the image and enhanced its three-dimensionality. Specially designed peepboxes were also created to contain them.
