1722 · Views & Engravings
The Great Temple of Vitsliputsli in Mexico City and a Few Murder Scenes, 1722
$405
€360 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1722
- Kind
- Views & Engravings
- Size
- 40 × 24.5 cm (15.7 × 9.6 in)
- Condition
- Good. Minor defects. Please study image carefully.
- Period
- Colonial America
- Places
- Mexico
- Reference
- BGI-00703
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 Great Temple of Vitsliputsli in Mexico City and two scenes of captives, an original copper engraving of 1722 by Bernard Picart, from Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses. Three images share the sheet, and each has its own caption: "Captif écorché après avoir été vaincu", "Captif combattant contre un Prêtre Mexicain", and "Le Grand Temple de Vitsliputsli dans la Ville de Mexique". The old listing names the author as A. Moubach.
The upper left image shows a captive, flayed after he was defeated, lying in the foreground as priests in an arched building work at an altar behind him. The upper right image shows a captive on a stone defending himself with a shield against a priest in a feathered headdress who raises a sword. The lower image is a broad bird's-eye view of the walled temple precinct of Mexico, with a tall stepped tower rising in the center and a symmetrical complex of houses and gardens, and the city of low flat-roofed buildings spreading around it, all drawn from the European imagination of Aztec Mexico.
Picart (1673 to 1733) was a French painter and engraver, who worked in Amsterdam, and his engravings of the religious ceremonies of the world were widely read in the eighteenth century.
