2007
From Versailles to the Forbidden City :
Engravings from the Louvre Collection

The Chalcography of the Louvre Museum brought together a collection of more than 13,500 plates engraved by the greatest French and foreign artists from the 16th century to the present day. It was founded on 12 May 1797, when the French Revolution handed over to the newly created Musée du Louvre the entirety of the copper plates engraved during the Ancien Regime and belonging to the Royal Collections, the collections of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and various other holdings, royal, private or public.

The exhibition retraced 4 centuries of the history of the art of engraving in France, from the map of Paris known as “Turgot’s Map” in 20 plates from the prestigious King’s Cabinet collection, continuing to works by contemporary artists

A variant of the first exhibition in China of the Chalcography of the Louvre Museum Quatre siècles d’estampes en France was first presented in Hangzhou in 2005 and then in 7 cities in China, and of Engraving the World presented in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, the exhibition was expanded to include a series of 22 prints from the Edmond de Rothschild Collection at the Musée du Louvre representing “The Conquests of the Emperor of China”, an extraordinary account of the cultural exchange between the France of Louis XV and the China of Qianlong.