Sicily GREEK TEMPLE OF SEGESTA RUINS ~ Old 1842 Architecture Art Print RARE!

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GRECIAN TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILY Artist: W. L. Leitch ____________ Engraver: J. Sands Note: the title in the table above is printed below the engraving !! PRINT DATE : This engraving was printed in 1841; it is not a modern reproduction in any way. PRINT SIZE : Overall print size is 7 1/2 inches by 10 inches including white borders which are not shown in the scan above, the actual scene is 5 inches by 7 1/2 inches. PRINT CONDITION : Condition is excellent. Bright and clean. Blank on reverse. Paper is quality woven rag stock paper. SHIPPING : Buyer to pay shipping, domestic orders receives priority mail, international orders receive regular air mail unless otherwise asked for. Please allow time for personal check to clear. We take a variety of payment options, more payment details will be in our email after auction close. We pack properly to protect your item! FROM THE ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION : "Meantime Acestes from a lofty stand Beheld the fleet descending on the land: And not unmindful of his ancient race, Down from the cliff he ran with eager pace, And held the hero in a strict embrace." AENEID V. segesta was founded by a Trojan prince, Acestes or Egestus, prior to the fall of that famous city and the dispersion of its defenders AEneas visited this place on his way to the shores of Italy; and here also, it appears, many of his followers remained. The foundations of the ancient city may still be traced on a hill, strewn with debris, and surmounted with the ruins of a theatre, about six miles from Alcamo, and on the road from that town to Trapani. The hill of Egesta rises in many undulations from a plain of some extent, which the traveller from Alcamo crosses, and which is rendered marshy in winter by the overflowing of two rivulets, that still bear the venerated names of Simois and Scamander, and fall into the bay of Castell-a-Mare. The temple is a Doric edifice, evidently of very ancient date, and most probably contemporary with the temple of Minerva at Syracuse: it stands in solitary grandeur on the brow of a hill forming an inferior ridge of that covered with the ruins of the town; the ground descends rapidly from the site, and on two sides sinks abruptly into deep chasms, that form the rude head of the broken and picturesque valley of Egesta, which is terminated by the castellated hill of Calatasimi. The basement on which the temple stands is one hundred and eighty feet in length, and seventy-six in breadth, ascended by four grades of corresponding proportions; the peristyle of thirty-six columns remains entire, one only has been damaged and repaired: the architrave is of unusual size and projection: the shafts of the columns are twenty-six feet eight inches in height, without flutings, and six feet in diameter at the base. The roof and cella are both gone; the latter, judging from the appearance of the area, must have been raised some feet above the level of the exterior porticos. The material of the building is the calcareous sandstone of the country; and it has been conjectured that this glorious type of the architectural genius of the olden time was never entirely finished. Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, etching, aquatint, lithograph, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, and NOT blocks of steel or wood or any other material. "ENGRAVINGS", the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or "engravings" were created by the intaglio process of etching the negative of the image into a block of steel, copper, wood etc, and then when inked and pressed onto paper, a print image was created. These prints or engravings were usually inserted into books, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone lithographs. They often had a tissue guard or onion skin frontis to protect them from transferring their ink to the opposite page and were usually on much thicker quali... read more

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