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Description

Rare Lithograph View of the First Arrondissement in 1840.

Great lithographed view of Paris focusing on the Louvre and showing the heart of the city in the Rive Droite. The detail is fabulous with the foreground showing the Tuileries, the Jardin du Carrousel, the Place Vendome, L'Eglise de la Madeleine, and many other sites. The extent of the First Arrondissement is shown using lighter tinting while surrounding neighborhoods are shown darker. The boundaries of this neighborhood have changed somewhat in the intervening century and a half, although its core remains much the same.

The geometric layout of the city is richly evident. The perspective, along with the titling that states that the view was drawn from above the Louvre, suggests that the view was based on one sketched in a Montgolfiere. 

This print came from a set produced by the Sebastian Avanzo publishing house, lithographed by Jules Arnout, and drawn by Nicolas Chapuy. The set, Paris et ses Arrondissemens, shows each of the twelve districts of Paris in magnificent detail, with building-by-building demarcation easily visible and detail extending to individual windows and features. The images produced as part of this project are a remarkable preservation of the nineteenth-century layout of the city and came nearly exactly one hundred years after the previous great aerial view of the city produced under Michel-Étienne Turgot.

Condition Description
Three-stone tinted lithograph. Foxing. Toning and soiling to edges. Minor uneven trim to border. Small pencil graffiti in the top margin (easily erased).