Teatro di San Carlo Naples, Antique Benoist Lithograph, circa 1850

About this sheet

The Teatro di San Carlo, the royal opera house of Naples. This original antique tinted lithograph is lettered beneath the image in French and Italian, NAPLES, Theatre St. Charles. and NAPOLI, Teatro di San Carlo., under the section heading ROYAUME DE NAPLES, and it was drawn from nature by Philippe Benoist and put on the stone by Bachelier. The view shows the colonnaded flank of the opera house seen down a busy street, carriages and a crowd in the foreground.

The plate comes from a French series of Italian views published in Paris by Bulla at 18 rue Tiquetonne and by Francois Delarue, successor to the Maison Aumont, at 10 rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, and printed by the house of Lemercier. Philippe Benoist, born in 1813, was one of the finest topographical lithographers working in Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century and is best known for the plates he drew for the great folio series on Paris and on Rome. Rose Joseph Lemercier ran the most important lithographic printing house in France, and the combination of Benoist on the stone and Lemercier at the press is the reason these views hold so much detail in the architecture while the crowds below stay loose and alive. The printing is a lithograph with a continuous tint stone laid across the whole image, with color worked over it by hand in separate touches and white body color used for the highlights. There is no plate mark, as there would be on an engraving. The sheet carries the plate number 34 between the two titles.

Views of this kind were made for the Grand Tour trade, for travelers who wanted to bring home the Italy they had just walked through, and they remain the most atmospheric record we have of these places before photography and before the rebuilding of the later nineteenth century. This is Naples as the traveler of the 1840s and 1850s found it, drawn on the spot. The combination of a warm tinted ground, hand applied color and a generous printed border means the sheet frames beautifully with very little work: a simple gilt or dark wood molding and a cream mat is all it needs. It hangs well in a dining room, a hall or a study, and a group of views from the same series on one wall is one of the most satisfying arrangements in the whole field of topographical prints.

Even age toning. A few small foxing spots in the margin. All four corners complete.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.