Georg
Christoph Kilian,1709-1781 followed an
apprenticeship with his father with the traditional
years of travel, visiting Nuremberg and Hungary and
working for a period in Vienna, where he studied the
art of the Old Masters. He returned to Augsburg and
established himself there, enjoying a high reputation
in the literary and artistic circles of his
time.
He worked both as a
talented artist and as an historian, art collector and
biographer of other artists. Apart from his renowned
natural history collection, Kilian had a well-chosen
art library and above all a comprehensive graphics
collection, comprising engravings, woodcarvings and
drawings.
He collected in
particular the works of his own family. He himself
also engraved portraits of his ancestors and family
for the collection. The latter, bound in six volumes,
now forms an important part of the Augsburg Staats-
& Stadtbibliothek, to which he bequeathed it,
along with the majority of his collection of 16000
engravings & prints in 1781.
His cartographic
works included the Supplement to the Atlas Curieux
[1738]; Kleiner Atlas [1757], Kriegs
Atlas [1758], Theat. Guerre Allemagne - 61
maps [1760], America Septentrionalis
[1760]
Le Antichita di
Ercolano (The Antiquities of Heculaneum) was a
collection of images of archeological finds from the
excavations at the Roman city of Herculaneum. It was
published over a 40 year period from 1744 to 1792 as
the excavations continued. Many different artists and
archeologists of the day worked on it. The Roman
cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were burried by the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius on the morning of 25
August, 79 AD. It was not until 1709 that the city of
Herculaneum was discovered when a peasant digging a
well on his property was astonished to uncover large
slabs of inscribed marble.
Measurements:. .
most plate-mark: 15 3/4" x 11" . . . sheet: 19 1/2" x
14 1/4"
