Hand-Colored Vue d’Optique of the Harbor of Havana, Cuba, circa 1770

Havana harbor in a hand-colored vue d'optique, an original engraving published in Paris by Daumont around 1770 and dated circa 1770 in the item fields. The title is engraved beneath the image in English and French, "A View General of the City de Havana of Amerique" and "Vue Generalle de la Ville de Havanne en Amerique", with the French title printed in reverse above the view. Optical prints of this kind were designed to be seen through a zograscope.

The view looks across the harbor toward the city. In the left foreground a large galleon fires its cannon, with smoke drifting across the water, and smaller sailing boats with their crews cross the channel. The castle tower at the harbor mouth stands at the center, and the chain boom can be seen stretched across the entrance. Beyond lie the city's roofs and church spires, ships at the quays and hills on the horizon. The naive coloring is standard for these prints, though the English version of the title is unusually inept.

By the middle of the eighteenth century Havana had more than seventy thousand inhabitants and was the third-largest city in the Americas, behind Lima and Mexico City but ahead of Boston and New York.