Tombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, Egypt

Tombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, Egypt

Luigi Mayer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Trained in Rome, Mayer was employed for much of his career by Sir Robert Ainslie (1729–1812), the British ambassador to the Ottoman court between 1777 and 1793. In 1792, Ainslie asked Mayer to accompany a group of British Grand Tourists from Constantinople to Egypt, then around Mediterranean sites. This watercolor relates to that trip and describes Muslim tombs at Rosetta, a town on the Nile between Cairo and Alexandria. After Ainslie returned to England, it was reproduced in Views in Egypt, a set of forty-eight hand-colored aquatints published by Robert Bowyer in 1801. Characteristically, the artist enhances accurate architectural information with evocative detail, and shows women collecting water near turbaned men who guard the tombs. Such prints informed European viewers about contemporary Egypt.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, EgyptTombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, EgyptTombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, EgyptTombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, EgyptTombs of Great Arab Saints to be seen in the Neighborhood of Rosetta, Egypt

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.