View of Mexico City on the Lake

The artwork

At the bottom, left of centre, a long row of arches curves towards the city: it is an aqueduct, because Mexico City was born in the middle of a lake, and a salt lake at that. You receive it printed on handmade Amalfi paper, in a handmade frame.

• Mexico City in 1739, a grid of blocks on the lake with its aqueduct, in black.
• In a study or an office, the grid of the city brings order to the wall.
• A gift for anyone who has lived in Mexico City.

Tenochtitlan, the Mexica city on which Mexico City was built, stood on an island in Lake Texcoco, and its water was undrinkable. Fresh water came from the springs of Chapultepec, along an aqueduct that in the fifteenth century Nezahualcóyotl, king of Texcoco, had built with two channels side by side: one carried the water while the other was being cleaned. During the siege of 1521 Hernán Cortés cut it. The lake remained a difficult neighbour: in 1629 a flood left the city under water for years, people got about by canoe, and there was even talk of moving the capital. Today only salt marshes remain of the lake, and the city fills almost the whole old basin.

In the view the city is a chessboard of blocks, with a large square and its fountain; behind it, the lake with its sailing boats and the mountains. The plate, titled “Mexico”, comes from the Atlas de poche, the pocket atlas published in Amsterdam by the bookseller Henri du Sauzet. Its volume of views, from 1739, is called Profiles ou vues des principales villes de l'Europe, &c.: Mexico City fits entirely into that “&c.”. It is a copper engraving in black, and the original is held in the David Rumsey Map Collection.

A gift for anyone who has lived in Mexico City, and for a hydraulic engineer too: it looks good in a study or in a technical office. And the arches, at the bottom, still carry water into the city.

Unique quality material

Print on handmade Amalfi paper
Sheet size: 29 x 42 cm (11.4 x 16.5 in)
With frame: 31 x 44 cm (12.2 x 17.3 in)
Material: artwork printed on very fine handmade Amalfi paper with deckled edges
Frame: dark brown with gold fillet, handmade, with glass