Examples of Copy Work Engravings from the late 18th Century, France

Portrait of Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

Portrait of Jean-Baptist le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783)

------------------------------------------------------

This morning while on eBay France I discovered a series of engravings from an 18th century drawing course as mentioned in Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean-Baptist le Rond d'Alembert (1717-1783) L'edition de Lucques de L'Encylopedie. As mentioned in a recent post (Book review of The Language of The Body), these engravings were used to train 18th and early 19th century art students in two preliminary stages of drawing: first, the copying of two-dimensional works of art, often engravings like these, which also often meant copying images of parts of the body before moving on to entire figures; and second, drawing after sculptures, usually plaster casts of well recognized antique master-works.

-------------------------------------------------------