Views & Engravings
Feast of the Sun in Peru: Lighting Sacred Fire and Offering to the Solar Deity
$325
€290 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Kind
- Views & Engravings
- Size
- 40 × 26 cm (15.7 × 10.2 in)
- Condition
- Good. General age related toning and occasional staining from handling as visible on image. Paper edges frayed and chipped from handling, not nearly effecting image. Images are fine. Study the scans carefully.
- Places
- Peru
- Reference
- BG-13806-62
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 scenes from the Inca Feast of the Sun, on one sheet, an original hand-colored copperplate engraving after Bernard Picart from his illustrated survey of the religious ceremonies and customs of the world's peoples, with the small signature "B. Picart inv." at the lower left of the lower image. Each image carries a French caption.
The upper scene is captioned "Manière d'allumer le feu sacré, chez les Péruviens, la veille de la grande fête du Soleil, nommée le grand Ramy". A crowd gathers in a stone courtyard around a white altar, where a figure in a red cloak kneels to kindle the fire, while onlookers kneel and raise their arms. At the left, bare-chested men bend over their work, and arches, towers and a domed building rise behind.
The lower scene, captioned "Le premier jour de la grande fête du Soleil, l'Yncas lui présente un Vase plein de Liqueur, et l'invite à boire", shows a packed square of dancers and worshippers in feathered headdresses. A figure at the center holds up a vessel toward the sun, while a bowl stands in the foreground and animals lie at the lower left. Tiled-roof houses and a domed tower fill the background.
The setting is European in its architecture, as eighteenth-century engravers of the Inca world usually composed it, working from the chroniclers rather than direct observation.
