Antique Engraving - Dominique Vivant Denon - Egyptian Portrait - F3

"Portraits"

This antique engraving is from the Dominique Vivant Denon’s ”Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les

campagnes de Bonaparte” (Journey in Lower and Upper Egypt during the Campaigns of Bonaparte). The work was published by Samuel Bagster in London, 1809.

At [Napoleon] Bonaparte's invitation Denon eagerly accepted an opportunity to join the expedition to Egypt (1798), and while there accompanied General Louis Charles Antoine Desaix up and down the Nile in pursuit of Murad Bey, recording antiquities as he went. He returned to France with Napoleon in 1800, and within the space of two years produced his monumental Voyage dans la basse et la haute Egypte, which contained 141 of his illustrations" (Howgego). The remarkable plates which illustrate this work, each described in detail in the accompanying text, are of great importance to Egyptology as they illustrate for the first time many new discoveries. Denon accompanied Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, and the present series of plates are among the great artistic achievements of that monumental campaign.

Dimensions

48 cm x 30 cm

Artist or Maker

Dominique Vivant Denon

Medium

Engraving

Date

1809