Bernard Picart

Bernard Picart (1673–1733), a French engraver established in Amsterdam, participates in the illustrated book culture of a city shaped by intellectual and religious exchange. With publisher Jean Frédéric Bernard, he undertakes Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, issued from 1723. Images enable the comparison of religious practices previously often described separately.

This observation of customs also informs his small prints. An etching of 1704 at the Rijksmuseum brings together three fashionably dressed men in different attitudes. In Interior of a Library (1724), also preserved there, etching and engraving organise a setting of scholarly sociability: readers surround a table, a man climbs a ladder, and two figures stand beside a globe. Gestural details give physical form to the activities through which knowledge is used and shared.

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