Proposal for Engraving by Subscription From an Original Picture Painted by Zuccarelle
1756
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet: 9 1/4 × 10 3/8 in. (23.5 × 26.4 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ephemera
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1962
Accession Number
62.661.7
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
This 1756 engraving by William Austin serves as both a work of art and a promotional notice. Titled as a proposal for subscription, it invites viewers to support the creation of prints after an original painting by Francesco Zuccarelli, an Italian artist whose luminous landscapes were highly popular in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. At just over nine by ten inches, the sheet functions as ephemera—an advertisement designed to circulate among potential subscribers—while showcasing the refined line work and tonal subtlety possible in the engraving medium. In an era before widespread color repro...