Topographische Erklärung des Panorama von Paris. by (PARIS PANORAMA).

Engraved print, 335 × 425 mm (sheet size), 297 × 345 mm (plate size), text in central octagonal panel and in left and right margins, hand-coloured, on a single uncut sheet of laid paper. Trace of two old folds, with a couple of minute holes towards the centre, traces of two old mounts on verso, slightly dusty but a very good copy with full margins.

A rare circular orientation plan for an early panorama of Paris made by Pierre Prévost. Presented in anamorphic form, it is a key plate made for visitors to Prévost’s celebrated large-scale panorama (one of the earliest) when it was exhibited in Vienna in 1814. The vantage point for both the panorama and the key was the roof of Napoleon’s Pavillon de Flore above the Tuileries. The visitor could stand at the centre of the full-size 360-degree panorama (its continuous image around 30 metres long) and identify the landmarks with the help of this captioned plate. Since the original panorama was so large, and travelled between several cities, it does not survive, though the preliminary drawing/watercolour does (exhibited by Galerie Kugel at TEFAF Maastricht, 2016 and subsequently sold by Sotheby’s, 19 November, 2019, lot 50). Both this drawing and our key plate are illustrated in Bernard Comment’s survey of early panoramas, the latter reproduced from a print in the city museum at Lubeck.

Prévost had created his first Paris panorama in 1799, the Vue de Paris depuis les Tuileries and then between 1810 and 1814 he produced a new panorama with a new view of Paris taken from the Pavillion de Flore at the top of the Tuilleries, which was exhibited at St Petersburg, Vienna and probably several German cities. It featured several newly constructed or recently modified monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, built 1806-8. Also notable is the rooftop semaphore telegraph station captioned ‘Direction de Télegraphes’. The text around the anamorphic image is in French, with the central giving the captions in German. Bernard Comment, The Panorama (Reaktion, 2002), pp. 44 and 83 (the latter showing our plate as illustration 164). We have located copies in the National Library of Poland, the state libraries of Berlin and Fulda, the city museums of Leipzig and Lubeck, the Paris Musée Carnavalet and the University of Chicago (with varying suggestions as to dating).