Encyclopédie de Diderot: Antiquités, Planche VIII

Encyclopédie de Diderot: Antiquités, Planche VIII
D’après l’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Diderot et D’Alembert, Paris, 1751–1772
$198
Original copper engraving on laid paper. Black frame. 20.5 × 15 in.

A plate from the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D’Alembert, the most ambitious publishing project of the French Enlightenment: 35 volumes, 72,000 articles, 3,000 engraved plates produced between 1751 and 1772 to document, for the first time in systematic form, the full scope of human knowledge, trade, and art. The plates were made by professional engravers working from original drawings and were considered art objects from the moment of publication.
Antiquités, Planche VIII is a documentation plate: artifacts, vessels, inscriptions, objects arranged for study. It belongs in a library, a study, or on any wall where intellectual seriousness is welcome. The black frame is correct for the period and the subject.