The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 14, 2025

A View of the Stairs of the Vatican

1766

Georges Francois Blondel

(French, 1730–1800)
mezzotint printed in black
Matted: 71.1 x 55.9 cm (28 x 22 in.); Image: 55.1 x 41.3 cm (21 11/16 x 16 1/4 in.); Sheet: 64.1 x 52.9 cm (25 1/4 x 20 13/16 in.)
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 2022.132
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Mezzotint was relatively new at the time this print was made and had yet to be utilized for such large plates of an architectural nature as seen here.

Description

After returning from several years spent in Italy, the French printmaker George-Francois Blondel settled in London in order to take advantage of the English taste for images of Italian sites. This is one of a series of eight prints he published in 1766 depicting imagined and real Italian interiors. Using the relatively new technique of mezzotint, which creates velvety, dark tonal areas, as well as low vantage points, Blondel created towering, awe-inspiring spaces. For special patrons, he printed the plates in sepia ink, rather than in black; the CMA’s set includes two of these unusual sepia impressions.
  • Thomas Pitt, first Baron Camelford (1737–1793), Boconnoc, Cornwall
    By descent until the 2010s
    June 22, 2017
    sale, Dreweatts Bloomsbury, London, England
    ?–2022
    (C.G. Boerner, LLC, New York, NY), sold to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
    September 12, 2022–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • N.G. Stogdon. [forthcoming] Catalogue raisonné of G.-F. Blondel’s prints. Print Quarterly
    Dodgson, Campbell, “The mezzotints of G F Blondel,” Print Collector's Quarterly (IX) 1922 p. 303–14
  • {{cite web|title=A View of the Stairs of the Vatican|url=false|author=Georges Francois Blondel|year=1766|access-date=14 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2022.132