Ruines d´un Temple/ the ruines of a temple in Petra

Title

Ruines d´un Temple/ the ruines of a temple in Petra

Description

View of the ruines of a tempel in Petra.

ca. 1830

Artist

Engelmann (1788-1839)

Godefroy Engelmann was a 19th-century Franco-German lithographer and chromolithographer. Godefroy Engelmann was born in 1788 in Mühlhausen, a small town near the France/Switzerland/Germany border. At the time of his birth Mulhouse was a free German republic associated with the Swiss Confederation, but was annexed by France 10 years later. He died in that same town in 1839, from a tumor in his neck. Engelmann trained in Switzerland and France at La Rochelle and Bordeaux, and he studied painting and sketching in Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s atelier in Paris. In the summer of 1814 he travelled to Munich, Germany to study lithography, a German invention. The following spring, he founded La Société Lithotypique de Mulhouse. In June 1816 he opened a workshop in Paris. Engelmann is largely credited with bringing lithography to France and later, commercializing chromolithography. In 1837 he was granted an English patent for a process of chromolithography that provided consistently high-quality results. Throughout his life, he produced large numbers of prints, including numerous plates for Baron Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor's celebrated collection of lithographs, «Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France». Engelmann's Paris printing company, -Engelmann et Graf- was passed on to his son, Godefroy Engelmann II (born 1819), who carried on his father's work with the same high artistic quality until his own death in 1897.

Historical Description

Petra originally known to the Nabataeans as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. The city is famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system. Another name for Petra is the Rose City due to the color of the stone out of which it is carved. Established possibly as early as 312 BC as the capital city of the Arab Nabataeans, it is a symbol of Jordan, as well as Jordan's most-visited tourist attraction.The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who took advantage of Petra's proximity to regional trade routes to establish it as a major trading hub. The Nabataeans are also known for their great ability in constructing efficient water-collecting methods in the barren deserts and their talent in carving structures into solid rocks.Petra lies on the slope of Jebel al-Madhbah (identified by some as the biblical Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah, the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.