A General display of the arts and Sciences
Dates
- c. 1788
Creator
- Howard, George Shelby (Editor, Person)
Conditions Governing Use
Access to the Theodore Newton Vail Collection of Aeronautical Images, Broadsides and Clippings is not authorization to publish. Separate written application for permission to publish must be made to the Institute Archives. Copyright of some items in this collection may be held by respective creators, not by the donor of the collection.
Biographical / Historical
The imagery in this print was derived from Sébastien Le Clerc's 1698 engraving "L'Académie des sciences et des beaux-arts" which itself borrowed from earlier artworks, notably Raphael's "School of Athens." Le Clerc's engraving was also used as the basis for frontispiece designs for a number of other encyclopeadias published before and after this one. The first seems to have been Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, published in London in 1728. The implication of the balloon's inclusion in these images was that the balloon had earned a place among history's great scientific discoveries.
Language of Materials
English
Existence and Location of Originals
Box 11
Physical Description
Art on Paper
Dimensions
24.5 x 38.8 cm
General Note
Print used as the frontispiece for Royal Encyclopaedia, compiled by George Selby Howard in 1788. A balloon flies above a Greek architectural square where are gathered a large group of men, buildings, inventions and discoveries significant to the history of Western science, art and philosophy.
Sources used for Biographical/Historical note
Keen, Paul. "The 'Balloonomania': Science and Spectacle in 1780s England. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 39: 4 (2006), 507-535.
"Sébastien Leclerc and the British Encyclopaedists," Sphæra: the newsletter of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, Autumn, 1997. /www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/sphaera/index.htm?issue6/articl11> Accessed February 26, 2010.
- Architecture -- Greece Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Art -- Study and teaching Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Crowds Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Frontispiece Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Globes Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Library buildings Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Mathematics Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Musical instruments Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Plato Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Science -- Study and teaching Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Science and the arts. Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Skeleton Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- prints (visual works) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
Creator
- Howard, George Shelby (Editor, Person)
- Grignion, Charles, 1721-1810 (Artist, Person)
- Le Clerc, Sébastien, 1637-1714 (Artist, Person)
Repository Details
Part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Libraries. Department of Distinctive Collections Repository
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries
Building 14N-118
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Cambridge MA 02139-4307 US
distinctive-collections@mit.edu