Bernard Picart

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Bernard Picart One of six copper plate engravings depicting Florida Indians (of 30 engravings total), Circa 1721, Volume One of "Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde" (Private Collection of L.S. Morgan, St. Augustine Beach, Florida)
Bernard Picart One of six copper plate engravings depicting Florida Indians (of 30 engravings total), Circa 1721, Volume One of "Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde" (Private Collection of L.S. Morgan, St. Augustine Beach, Florida)

Bernard Picart (1673-1733) was a French engraver, son of Etienne Picart, also an engraver. He was born in Paris and died in Amsterdam. He moved to Antwerp in 1696, and then spent a year in Amsterdam before returning to France at the end of 1698. After his wife died in 1708, he moved to Amsterdam in 1711 (later being joined by his father), where he became a Protestant convert and married again.[1]

Most of his work was book-illustrations. His most famous work is Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, appearing from 1723 to 1743. Jonathan I. Israel[2] calls Cérémonies "an immense effort to record the religious rituals and beliefs of the world in all their diversity as objectively and authentically as possible", although he had never left Europe. He relied on accounts by those who had, and had access to a collection of Indian sculpture.[3] The original French edition of "Cérémonies" comprises ten volumes of text and engravings.

Israel notes also that Picart left Paris with Prosper Marchand,[4] and collaborated on the Cérémonies with Jean-Frédéric Bernard, with a commitment to religious toleration. Picart, Marchand and Charles Levier belonged to a "radical Huguenot coterie".[5]

[edit] "Cérémonies" engravings

  • Vol. 1: Asie, Afrique and Amérique (Asia, Africa and America)- 30 engravings
  • Vol. 2 - 33 engravings
  • Vol. 3 - 19 engravings
  • Vol. 4 - 14 engravings
  • Vol. 5 - 26 engravings
  • Vol. 6 - 45 engravings
  • Vol. 7 - 58 engravings
  • Vol. 8 - 5 engravings
  • Vol. 9 - 24 engravings
  • Vol. 10- 12 engravings

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Grove Art, accessed 26 May 2007
  2. ^ Israel, 2001, p.135.
  3. ^ Grove Art, accessed 26 May 2007
  4. ^ Israel, 2001, pp.575-6
  5. ^ Israel, 2001, p.696.

[edit] References

  • Wyss-Giacosa, Paola von (2006). Religionsbilder der frühen Aufklärung : Bernard Picarts Tafeln für die Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde. Wabern (Switzerland): Benteli, 2006. OCLC 65207871
  • Israel, Jonathan I. (2001). Radical enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OCLC 44425436
  • Jacob, Margaret, Bernard Picart and the Turn to Modernity, De Achttiende eeuw, vol. 37, 2005, pp. 1-16.
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