Choix Des Pierres Gravées Du Cabinet Impérial Des Antiques: Représentées En XL. Planches
This is a late eighteenth-century Vienna collectors' catalogue by Joseph Hilarius Eckhel, published in 1788, reproducing forty plates of carved gemstones from the Imperial Cabinet of Antiquities for scholars and collectors. The four engravings show classical mythological figures in framed oval and rounded compositions, with figures arranged in calm, frieze-like groupings. A designer could take from them the restrained, symmetrical compositions of neoclassical intaglio, with figures set against dark grounds and cut into clean linework.
