The Fall of Phaeton (after Giuseppe Cesari)

Over the years 1729-1742, the wealthy French banker Pierre Crozat financed a portfolio of prints after "the most beautiful paintings and drawings" as a way of publicizing works housed in major art collections of France—those of the king, the Duke of Orléans, and Crozat himself, among others. This portfolio combined a variety of printmaking techniques adapted to the media being reproduced. In the first edition, engraving was used for paintings, and etching for monochrome line drawings. To reproduce wash drawings, color was added to the black etched design by means of successive woodblock printings. But for the second edition, printed in 1763, the publisher replaced some of the woodcut images with duplicates in the brand-new medium of aquatint, which was more effective in reproducing a wash effect.