19th Century Engraving Hero And Leandre Framed In Golden Wood

Very beautiful neoclassical engraving after Pierre Claude Fr. DELORME (1783-1859) & Engraved by Jean Nicolas LAUGIER (1785-1875). "Hero and Leander", 1816. The gilded wooden frame is really very beautiful. The white part of the sheet shows traces of humidity which is not the case in the image. Very good quality engraving. A similar engraving can be found at the Magnin Museum in Dijon: https://dessins-magnin.fr/html/8/selection/page_notice-ok.php?Ident=D&NoticeId=461&myPos=1 Héro and Léandre lived on opposite banks, from the hellespont (current dardanelles strait). On the shore of Europa, in Sestos, lived the young and beautiful Hero, priestess of the temple of Aphrodite. Leander, a young man from Abydos, a city on the Asian side, saw him during a festival dedicated to the goddess, and the two young people fell madly in love with each other. Leander swam across the strait every night to enjoy the company of the young girl. In order to guide him in this dangerous crossing, Hero lit a torch at the top of a tower. But, one night, a storm arose, the torch went out and, his strength weakening in the middle of the strait, Leander drowned. His body was carried by the waves to the European coast where, Hero, discovering the death of his lover, threw himself into the sea and drowned himself. A tower called Maiden's Tower is shown in Istanbul, near the Asian coast of the Bosphorus; This tower was built in the 18th century on the remains of a fortress that the Byzantine emperor Manuel Komnenos had built in the 12th century and which made it possible to close the Bosphorus using a chain stretched between the two banks. Source: Larousse Encyclopédie Delivery for France €35