Filippo Morghen styled himself "Engraver to the King of the Two Sicilies"; in 1776, the Neapolitan artist broke from his naturalistic subjects to produce a book of ten fanciful engravings about a voyage to the Moon.
publicdomainreview.org/collection/fil…
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publicdomainreview.org/collection/fil…
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"The Suite of the Most Notable Things Seen by Cavaliere Wild Scull, and by Signore de la Hire on Their Famous Voyage from the Earth to the Moon," featured today on @PublicDomainRev, went through three editions, and it's not hard to see why.
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The engravings show a lunar civilization mixing "technological innovation, colonial imagination, and a sense of rococo excess," part of a genre of Moon voyage fiction including Francis Godwin's "Man in the Moone" (1638) and John Wilkins' "Discovery of the World in the Moon."
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These works and others are all available in gorgeous, hi-rez scans. "Notable Things" is in the Yale collection:
artgallery.yale.edu/collection/sea…
"Moone," at Harvard:
iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view…
and "Discovery" at the @internetarchive:
archive.org/details/discov…
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artgallery.yale.edu/collection/sea…
"Moone," at Harvard:
iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view…
and "Discovery" at the @internetarchive:
archive.org/details/discov…
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ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acc…
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