A Panoramic View of Loreto

Between 1630 and 1650, Silvestre often traveled to Italy. During his numerous sojourns, he produced panoramic drawings of Rome, Florence, and the surrounding countryside and used these studies as the basis for a series of topographical engravings. This large sheet, once part of an album of thirty-five views of Italy, depicts the small hill town of Loreto, recognizable by the great pilgrimage church that enshrines the house in which the Virgin Mary is believed to have lived. The composition is close to one of two engraved views of Loreto by the artist dated 1642 and executed in Paris (see (P)1974.56).