Vue de la Cathedrale de Syracuse, ancien Temple de Minerve

View taken form Achille Etienne Gigault de la Salle’s Voyage pittoresque en Sicile, dedié a son allesse royale M.me la Duchesse de Berry, printed in Paris, Ostervald, 1822-1826.

The work consists of two big in folio volumes and represents the main iconographic work on Sicily, very closely connected with the picturesque, neoclassical vedutism.

Achille Etienne Gigault de la Salle (1772-1855) was referendary council member of the Corte dei Conti, censor of the Paris Library, prefect of Alta Marna. La Salle made a short trip to Sicily in 1820; he could not bring back home but superficial information, but he then used all the details he could get from his readings to write his own text: he read about the history and the monuments of the island and then used his aesthetic sense and the evocative power of the images he wad due to comment. For that reason, as it has been duly noted, his text, introduced by a summary of historical events in Sicily, is not the expression of a direct experience, but it is more a faithful commentary to the pictures.

The author of the whole project was the Swiss publisher Jean Fréderic D’Ostervald (1773-1850), who personally selected 42 drawings of the Count Forbin, which can be considered the core of the work; 15 drawings of L. F. Cassas, and others by Huber, Michalon, Frommel, Cockerell and many others. From these drawings he realized beautiful etchings, carved by some Swiss and English engravers (Hégui, Bentley, Himely, Legrand, Salathé, Fielding, Egerton, Bennet, Réeve).