Illustrations of Virgil’s Georgica, 1937–50

Wood engravings on pure rag paper, edition 11/20, 12 ⅜ × 9 ½ in. (31.5 × 24 cm) each

Gift of Ward and Laurel Gasque

From 1937 to 1943, the renowned French artist Aristide Maillol created 100 illustrations for a bilingual Latin/French edition of Virgil’s long poem Georgica (c. 29 BCE). Virgil’s poem is an extended meditation on the joys, sorrows, futilities, and beauty of agricultural life, which Maillol’s images bring out in various salient passages. Unfortunately, the artist did not live to see the final publication of these works in the beautiful two-volume Les Géorgiques de Virgile, published in Paris in 1950. These three sets of prints in Regent’s collection were hand-pressed by the publisher Phillipe Gonin (his watermark is visible in the lower right of two of the pages), featuring groupings of the final proofs of Maillol’s images that would be printed throughout Virgil’s text and on the back cover of the second volume.