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Occasioned by Fire.(Edinburgh's Great Fire of 1824)

From: Harvard Review  |  Date: 12/1/2005  |  Author: Battles, Matthew

Last year a colleague showed me a book of eight engraved images of the ruins of Edinburgh's Great Fire of 1824. The pictures were vigorous and strange, built up from thick gobs of ink enmeshed in traceries of fine lines. The landscape they depicted was torn, ragged, and empty; the population seemed to have fled. These images of broken and charred hulks of buildings brought the Roman ruins of Piranesi to mind; they were rendered with an impressionistic dash and vigor more in keeping ...

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