Views in Egypt (text)
1801
Medium
Book with letterpress in black on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Book, closed: 47.3 × 33.5 × 2.3 cm (18 5/8 × 13 1/4 × 15/16 in.); Book; open: 47.3 × 68 × 3.4 cm (18 5/8 × 26 13/16 × 1 3/8 in.)
Classification
book
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
38381
Art Historical Context
Luigi Mayer’s *Views in Egypt*, published in 1801, captures the growing European fascination with ancient and modern Egypt at the dawn of the nineteenth century. Printed as a book of letterpress text on cream wove paper, the volume offered readers carefully described scenes of the Nile, temples, and daily life. Mayer, an artist who traveled widely through the Ottoman Empire, supplied the original drawings that were later translated into print, allowing armchair travelers to encounter Egypt through both image and word. The book appeared just after Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, when scholarly a...