A General Display of the Arts and Sciences

An architectural ensemble with classical stylistic features, rising amidst an expansive landscape, serves as a stage where humanists, natural scientists, engineers, and artists – depicted in small groups of figures – are absorbed in conducting scientific experiments, research, creative work, and reflections on various fields of knowledge. The figures are accompanied by measuring instruments, devices, models, specimens, and diagrams. All the scenes, such as those in the foreground – discussions about the plan for modern fortifications, deliberations over the form of a portrait cartouche, heraldic debates, analysis of a diagram of celestial motion, work on geometry, arithmetic, and optics, studies of an astral globe – as well as those depicted in the background, such as physical experiments, treatises, and the creative activities of painters, draftsmen, and musicians, a lecture on natural sciences, or a demonstration of balloon flight, represent allegories of individual disciplines. The engraving is an illustration preceding the title page, or a frontispiece, included in the first volume of William Henry Hall’s (17..–1807) work, The New Royal Encyclopædia; or, Complete Modern Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, on a New and Improved Plan. The original design was created by Sebastian Le Clerc I (1637–1714), who produced the drawing and the first version of the engraving around 1698. The reproduction engraving was created by the English artist Charles Grignion I, known as the Elder (1717–1810), who specialised in engraving illustrations and was trained in London by Hubert Gravelot and Gerard Scotin, as well as in Paris by Jacques-Philippe Le Bas. The publisher of the volume, whose first edition dates to 1788, was Charles Cooke (1759/1760–1816), active in London and known for publishing pocket-sized editions of English classics. Cooke inherited the publishing house from his father, John Cooke (1730/31–1810). Ewa Gwiazdowska