Celebration and Ritual: Engraving of Mexican Festivities in the Age of Discovery

Name: Celebration and Ritual: Engraving of Mexican Festivities in the Age of Discovery
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13597-46
Price: 605 USD
Availability: InStock

$605

€540 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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

Date: 1794
Kind: Views & Engravings
Size: 23.5 × 38.5 cm (9.3 × 15.2 in)
Condition: Good. Good condition. Minor visible signs of aging such as edge wear, paper browning, and foxing spots (outside the image) are apparent. Most wear is around the edges. Please study the image carefully.
Places: Mexico
Reference: BG-13597-46

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

"The Rejoicings of the Mexicans, at the beginning of the Age", an original copper engraving published in London by Alex. Hogg at the King's Arms, No. 16 Paternoster Row, as the imprint at the top of the plate reads. It comes from Portlock's New Collection of Voyages and Travels, issued in 1794.

A ring of dancers moves in the center of the scene, most of them in feathered headdresses, with some in skirts of feathers. At the left a kneeling musician beats a large drum and another man plays a long horn, while on the right a group stands before a pyramid-like temple topped with a dome and a ball, its face carrying a large sun disc. More dancers appear in the middle distance beyond a palm tree, and a broad tree spreads over the scene at the left, with hills and sea in the distance.

The print is a European reconstruction of an imagined scene, built from the accounts of travelers and not from observation, and it shows how Mexico was pictured for English readers of the 1790s.

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