The Great Wine Barrel at Heidelberg, Antique Engraving after Chapuy, circa 1860

A steel engraving of the Great Wine Barrel at Heidelberg, the celebrated giant cask in the cellar of Heidelberg Castle. The barrel fills the right half of the image, its enormous round end decorated with a carved cartouche of arms and a row of carved brackets, resting on a heavy timber cradle. To the left, a vaulted stone cellar recedes into shadow, with ordinary barrels lined up in the depths for scale, and a barred window at far left.

Victorian visitors give the scene its charm: a gentleman in a top hat and his young son, a lady in a wide crinoline beside a companion, another gentleman leaning on his cane with a spotted dog at his feet as he gazes up at the cask, and a solitary figure walking out at left. Light falls from the left across the flagstone floor, picking out the figures against the dark vault.

The Heidelberg Tun has drawn visitors to the castle since the eighteenth century, and it was a fixture of every tour along the Neckar and the Rhine. The plate is lettered "The Great Wine Barrel at Heidelberg" in copperplate script, drawn by Chapuy and engraved by A.H. Payne, and it carries the imprint of The London Printing and Publishing Company, Limited.

The technique is steel engraving, with the rough stone of the vault suggested by wavy, broken lines and the polished wood of the barrel in tight curved hatching. Fine detail in the costumes points to the middle of the nineteenth century. The printed image is clean.

A witty choice for a wine cellar, a tasting room or a kitchen with a German or Rhine theme, it would look right in a dark oak frame with an ivory mat.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.