13TH FLOOR GAMES

1860 Antique Engraving Renaissance Palaces Floor Plans Rome Architecture - Original Copper Engraving

This is an original 1860 engraving of several Renaissance building floor plans including: Palazzo Gentili; Palazzo d'Aste; and Palazzo Strozzi, by architect Paul Letarouilly. Of the over 300 different original engravings we have obtained by architect Letarouilly, only a few contain his personal blind emboss markings, still intact. It is likely that very few of these exist in the world (and more likely that none are available for purchase). This engraving DOES have the rare blind emboss, from 1856, with his name, and it is not visible in the digital picture. In addition, only those with the blind emboss were created on this slightly more desirable, hand-modeled stock. Simply stunning.
Period Paper is pleased to offer an exceptional collection of original first impression engravings of the architectural masterpieces of Renaissance Rome. This collection, which dates from 1860, is the result of thirty-five years of meticulous work by French architect Paul Letarouilly. This is a rare collection, and all of the engravings are in very good condition considering their age. Each engraving has the original plate impression although it is not visible on our digital image. Please note that due to the large format of these engravings, they will be shipped rolled in a museum-quality shipping tube.

Marble Palace or Mramornyi Dvorets was one of the first Neoclassical palaces in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is situated between the Field of Mars and Palace Quay, slightly to the east from Winter Palace.

The palace was built by Count Grigory Orlov, the favorite of Empress Catherine the Great and the most powerful Russian nobleman of the 1760s. Construction started in 1768 to designs by Antonio Rinaldi, who previously had helped decorate the grand palace at Caserta near Naples. The combination of sumptuous ornamentation with rigorously classicizing monumentality, as practiced by Rinaldi, may be attributed to his earlier work under Luigi Vanvitelli in Italy.

The palace takes its name from its opulent decoration in a wide variety of polychrome marbles. A rough-grained Finnish granite on the ground floor is in subtle contrast to polished pink Karelian marble of the pilasters and white Urals marble of capitals and festoons. Panels of veined bluish gray Urals marble separate the floors, while Tallinn dolomite was employed for ornamental urns. In all, 32 disparate shades of marble were used to decorate the palace.

The plan of the edifice is trapezoidal: each of its four facades, though strictly symmetrical, has a different design. One of the facades conceals a recessed courtyard, where an armored car employed by Lenin during the October Revolution used to be mounted on display between 1937 and 1992. Nowadays, the court is dominated by a sturdy equestrian statue of Alexander III of Russia, the most famous work of sculptor Paolo Troubetzkoy; formerly it graced a square before the Moscow Railway Station.
Fedot Shubin, Mikhail Kozlovsky, Stefano Torelli and other Russian and foreign craftsmen decorated the interior with inlaid coloured marbles, stucco, and statuary until 1785, by which time Count Orlov fell out of favour with the Empress, who had the palace purchased for her own heirs. In 1797–1798 the structure was leased to Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last king of Poland. Thereafter the palace belonged to Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich and his heirs from the Konstantinovichi branch of the Romanov family.

In 1843, Grand Duke Constantine Nikolayevich decided to redecorate the edifice, renaming it Constantine Palace and engaging Alexander Brullov as the architect. An adjacent church and other outbuildings were completely rebuilt, while the interior of the palace was refurbished in keeping with the eclectic tastes of its new owner. Only the main staircase and the Marble Hall survived that refacing and still retain the refined stucco work and elaborate marble pattern of Rinaldi's original decor.

During the Soviet era, the palace successively housed the Ministry of Labour (1917–19), the Academy of Material Culture (1919–36), and the Lenin Museum (1937–91). Currently, the palace accommodates permanent exhibitions of the Russian State Museum, notably "Foreign Artists in Russia (18th and 19th centuries)" and the "Peter Ludwig Museum at the Russian Museum", featuring canvases by Andy Warhol and other Pop Art idols.

This is the Diwan-I-Khas which was a private audience hall of the Maharajas, a marble floored chamber. It is located between the armoury and the art gallery. It's part of the City Palace Jaipur.

City Palace, Jaipur, which includes the Chandra Mahal and Mubarak Mahal palaces and other buildings, is a palace complex in Jaipur city, the capital of the Rajasthan state, India. It was the seat of the Maharaja of Jaipur, the head of the Kachwaha Rajput clan. The Chandra Mahal palace now houses a museum but the greatest part of it is still a royal residence.

The palace complex, which is located northeast of the centre of the grid patterned Jaipur city, incorporates an impressive and vast array of courtyards, gardens and buildings. The palace was built between 1729 and 1732, initially by Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber. He planned and built the outer walls, and later additions were made by successive rulers right up to the 20th century. The credit for the urban layout of the city and its structures is attributed to two architects namely, Vidyadar Bhattacharya, the chief architect in the royal court and Sir Samuel Swinton Jacob, apart from the Sawai himself who was a keen architectural enthusiast. The architects achieved a fusion of the Shilpa shastra of Indian architecture with Rajput, Mughal and European styles of architecture.

The history of the city palace is closely linked with the history of Jaipur city and its rulers, starting with Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II who ruled from 1699-1744. He is credited with initiating construction of the city complex by building the outer wall of the complex spreading over many acres. Initially, he ruled from his capital at Amber, which lies at a distance of 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) from Jaipur. He shifted his capital from Amber to Jaipur in 1727 because of an increase in population and increasing water shortage.

He planned Jaipur city in six blocks separated by broad avenues, on the classical basis of principals of Vastushastra and other similar classical treatise under the architectural guidance of Vidyadar Bhattacharya, a man who was initially an accounts-clerk in the Amber treasury and later promoted to the office of Chief Architect by the King.

1856: Guillaume, "Un Palais d'Ambassade Fran?aise ? Constantinople." (Floor Plan)
This is an original, circa 1902, print of an architectural drawing of the 1856 Grand Prix de Rome d'Architecture.
This print is part of a collection of prints of architectural drawings from the Prix de Rome from 1850-1900. Created in 1663, the Prix de Rome was a prestigious scholarship for art students in which the winners could attend the Acad?mie de France in Rome. Many famous artists, architects, and sculptors competed for this coveted prize. Overall, this collection is in excellent condition and any print would look fabulous framed.
Please note that there is printing on the reverse.