Gezicht op Parijs 1641 - 1695

Nicolas Perelle made this print called ‘View of Paris’ in the latter half of the 17th century. It provides us with insight into the social life of the city, as much as its architectural makeup. Perelle's Paris is a place of work and leisure. We see people traveling by boat on the river and others resting on the shore. In the background, the city's monuments and buildings tell of its economic and religious organization, as well as the development of infrastructure. But this image wasn’t just a neutral record of the city. Prints like this, made for a growing market of collectors and tourists, played an important role in shaping perceptions and promoting civic pride. This print, for example, was made with the ‘privilege du Roy’, or royal privilege, indicating the importance of art to the projection of power and status. To fully understand prints like this, we need to look at archival documents and other visual sources that help us to reconstruct the social and institutional context in which they were made and consumed.