Prospect des Plazes vor dem Rath Haus zu Boston / Vuë de la Rue et de la Maison de Ville a Boston (View of City Hall Plaza, Boston)
Artist and engraver Franz Xavier Habermann German
Publisher Academie Imperiale, Augsburg German
Not on view
An imaginary view of an important street in Boston, Massachusetts. 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.
