Artist/Engraver: Augustin François Lemaître (1797–1870) and Léon Gaucherel (1816–1886)
Technique: Original Antique Steel Engraving, Plate twenty five
Dimensions: Plate: 9.7x14.5 cm | Page: approx. 14.0x21.5 cm
Status: Authentic 1845 print, explicit text titles on the upper and lower borders
Publisher: Firmin Didot Frères, Paris (From Salomon Munk's Palestine)
About the Artwork:
This authentic antique steel engraving, published in 1835, captures a dramatic, architecturally framed view titled Piscina di Siloe a Gerusalemme (The Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, Holy Land). The site holds profound biblical significance, famously documented in the Old Testament and the Gospel of John chapter nine, where Jesus heals a blind man by instructing him to wash in the pool. The composition looks from beneath a massive, vaulted ancient stone archway out toward a steep, rising flight of stone steps leading to the upper city level. The shaded foreground highlights the calm water basin of the pool surrounded by rugged rocks and native overhanging foliage on the left. Several regional figures in traditional nineteenth-century attire, including travelers with walking sticks, populate the stone stairs under an open sky backdropped by distant hills. This plate originates from the noted historical work Palestine: Description Géographique, Historique et Archéologique compiled by Salomon Munk.
About the Artists:
Augustin François Lemaître (1797–1870): A highly prominent French engraver, illustrator, and publisher who directed the visual production of the monumental L'Univers Pittoresque series.
Léon Gaucherel (1816–1886): A distinguished French painter, etcher, and engraver who achieved immense success for his precise, fine-line architectural and topographical plates.
Salomon Munk (1803–1867): A world-renowned French-Jewish orientalist and linguist whose pioneering nineteenth-century archaeological documentation of Palestine remains a landmark study.