Antique Engravings on One Sheet Depicting Ruins in Mexico, 1857

Name: Antique Engravings on One Sheet Depicting Ruins in Mexico, 1857
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-10123
Price: 245 USD
Availability: InStock

$245

€220 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1857
Kind: Views & Engravings
Size: 25.8 × 20.7 cm (10.2 × 8.1 in)
Condition: Good. General age-related toning. Please study image carefully.
Period: Westward Expansion & Civil War
Places: Mexico
Reference: BG-10123

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

Two ruins in Mexico, an original steel engraving of 1857 on one sheet from Carl August Menzel's Die Kunstwerke vom Alterthum bis auf die Gegenwart. The sheet carries a plate number at the upper left and has no printed title.

The upper image shows a small temple with three dark doorways standing on top of a rocky hill, reached by a narrow flight of stone steps that climbs between the boulders and trees. Wooded slopes and a distant ridge fill the background. The lower image shows a large stepped pyramid with a stairway on its face, rising from a flat plain beneath palms and spiky agaves, and two blocks of carved stone lie in the foreground as if fallen from the ruins. Both views are drawn in fine tonal engraving that suggests the heat and dust of the landscape.

The architecture is that of the pre-Hispanic peoples of Mexico, with pyramid platforms topped by small chambered shrines. The sheet is one of several plates in Menzel's survey of art and architecture that deal with the monuments of ancient Mexico.

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