Archaeological Plate from Collection for Book Illustrations with a Neoclassical Subject

Engraving with an archaeological plate from a collection of book illustrations, containing a couple standing to the sides of a tree, where a snake and a goat stand. There is another snake-like figure that scrolls up around the tree, and the man, wearing only a cape on his back, holds it. The woman, whose body is covered by draping fabrics, stares down and points to the snake. They are standing above a semi-circle containing a group of animals, which include lions and horses, and inside an oval-shaped frame with stylized Greek-style letters engraved on it. This kind of archaeological plate, illustrating neoclassical scenes with subjects from Ancient Rome and Greece, was characteristic of French art in the eighteenth century, where a renewed interest in classical antiquity was fostered by both the discovery of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the increasing importance of the Grand Tour, in which the "cognoscenti" (persons of culture and sensibility) traveled to study the monuments of Roman and Greek Antiquity. Archaeological plates like this would have been printed in illustrated books with detailed descriptions of freshly discovered ruins, in an effort to retrieve the glories of lost civilizations and disseminate the style that would come to characterize the neoclassical taste in the arts.