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It’s a shame there isn’t more of this imaginative work from Filippo Morghen (1730\u20131777). In a series of etchings from around 1766 he presents the moon as a tropical world inhabited by the 18th century conception of New World savages. I especially like the hunter on his winged serpent (above) and the elaborate trap set to behead a wary beast (below). The explanatory text is from this print collection<\/a> which also has large copies of the pictures.<\/p>\n Filippo Morghen was a member of a large family of artists. His brother Giovanni was a painter and printmaker and his son, Rafaello, was a printmaker who specialized in reproductive prints after Raphael and Leonardo. Filippo himself was a designer and printmaker. In addition to the present series on the theme of a voyage to the moon, Morghen is known for a series of plates detailing antiquities from Herculaneum and for views of the environs of Naples.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n This set of fanciful etchings is dedicated to William Hamilton, an envoy to the court of Naples. Morghen’s exuberant rococo style, with ornamental passages of chinoiserie, makes for a curious and playful description of a voyage to the moon. There were many seventeenth-century treatises dealing with the possibility of a voyage to the moon. Morghen, perhaps through Hamilton, apparently knew that Philippe de la Hire (whose name appears in the title) did not believe the moon was inhabited. A later edition of the series substitued the figure of Bishop John Wilkins for that of Wild Scull (de la Hire’s travelling companion). Wilkins had published The Discovery of a World in the Moone<\/em> in 1638.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Elsewhere on { feuilleton } It’s a shame there isn’t more of this imaginative work from Filippo Morghen (1730\u20131777). In a series of etchings from around 1766 he presents the moon as a tropical world inhabited by the 18th century conception of New World savages. I especially like the hunter on his winged serpent (above) and the elaborate trap set … Continue reading “Filippo Morghen’s Voyage to the Moon”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,30,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-black-white","category-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-1N","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"prm136x.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/03\/prm136x.jpg\")
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\n\u2022 The etching and engraving archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"