VESTIGES D’UN TEMPLE DE CYBELE vulgairement appellé l’ecole d’HOMERE. FEMMES DE L’ILE DE SCIO.

The top engraving in this pair is a pretty view taken from the sea of a shore busy with fishermen - a mosque stands imposingly right by the sea, but little of the ruined temple to Cybele, the Goddess of fertility, remains despite the picture’s title. The bottom engraving shows three women from Scio in Khios, Greece, looking across to the town.In 1776 Choiseul-Gouffier and the artist J.B. Hilaire joined a cartographic survey of the Mediterranean. Volume I of Voyage Pittoresque, his account of their tour of the Greek islands, the coast of Asia Minor, and of his travels on the mainland, was immediately acclaimed on publication in 1778. According to Brunet, it was incontestably the most beautiful production of this kind seen until then. Choiseul-Gouffier's work offered for the first time, illustrations of remote places that complemented the scrupulously researched narrative.

Fine condition, with good wide margins.