Naval Battle Off St. François (Campeche, Mexico), ca. 1780

About this piece

Vue perspective de la Ville de St. Francois de Campeche dans l'Amerique Septentrionalle, an original hand-colored engraving of about 1780, a vue d'optique published in Paris by Huquier fils. The imprint under the title names Huquier fils as engraver at rue St. Jacques, and the title is also engraved in reverse across the top margin, "Ville de S. Francois de Campeche," so that it reads correctly in the mirror of an optical viewer.

The view looks across the water to the walled town with its towers, red-roofed bastions and low houses, and to a green hill rising behind it. In the foreground a large three-masted ship with a red banner at the masthead fires a broadside, and clouds of gun smoke roll across the water toward a second vessel at the right that is heeling over, its masts leaning, in the thick of the fight. Smaller boats with figures stand off between the combatants, and more ships lie in the distance near the shore.

San Francisco de Campeche, on the Gulf coast of the Yucatan peninsula, was a fortified Spanish port that was exposed to attack from the sea, and the engraver's title places it in North America. Vues d'optique of this kind were made in Paris and Augsburg to be seen through a lens in a box.