Vue de Bâle

Original pencil drawing, numerous stings.
This print, depicting the Bay of Naples overlooking the bluish silhouette of Vesuvius, was later added to a set of Italian landscapes in an amicorum album among engravings, lithographs, drawings, and washings.
Executed in the first quarter of the 19th century, these prints summarize the stages of the "Grand Tour" of Italy, the obligatory journey of the post-Napoleonic nobility who came to Italy to make an artistic and bucolic pilgrimage to the great achievements of the Renaissance, City views and charming Lombard and Piedmont mountain lakes. The European aristocracy was therefore fond of these prints of good graphic quality enhanced with brilliant colors, which brought together the high places of architecture and the Italian countryside.