View of the Alhambra from San Nicolas

View of the Alhambra from San Nicolas 

Victor Marie Picot after Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1775 

Copper engraving 

Richard Twiss (1747-1821) was the son of an English merchant, who travelled to Spain and Portugal in 1772 and 1773. This panoramic view of the Alhambra is among the earliest images of the palace-fortress to be accessible to British audiences. 

Twiss copied it from a drawing by the Spanish artist Diego Sánchez de Sarabia, who had been commissioned by the Royal Academy of Fine Art of San Fernando in Madrid to create images of the Nasrid palace with the intention of publishing a survey of the monumental complex. Twiss gained access to these drawings, and, as he admitted, made the copy against the will of the Bourbon King Charles III. The king was concerned that such copies would undermine the originality of the Academy’s pioneering survey project Antigüedades árabes de España, published between 1787 and 1804. 

Twiss’s travelogue provides English readers with a wealth of detailed information about Spain and its Islamic monuments in Granada and Córdoba. He comments on Spanish paintings in churches and private collections and the royal collections, and discusses Spanish customs, including bull fighting, dress, ‘gitanos’, the opera, and the use of tobacco.  

Title: [View of the Alhambra from San Nicolas]  

Author/Artist: Victor Marie Picot (1745-1802, engraver) after Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733-1794, artist). 

Technique and Material: Copper engraving. 

Dimensions: 295 x 680 mm.  

Published: Plate [6] from Richard Twiss, Travels through Portugal and Spain in 1772 and 1773. Printed for the author, and sold by G Robinson, T Becket, and J Robson. London, 1775. 

Date: 1775. 

Marks and Inscriptions: lower edge, left: ‘S. H. Grimm del[ineavit]’; centre: ‘Published as the Act directs. March 30. 1775’; right: ‘V. M. Picot sculp[si]t’. 

Institution: Barry Ife Collection.