Louis-François Cassas

Louis-François Cassas drew Cyprus in 1785 for a book whose illustrations were listed at 300. He was a landscape painter, etcher and architect, born at Azay-le-Ferron in 1756³. The French ambassador at Constantinople, Choiseul-Gouffier, charged him with drawing sites in the Ottoman empire, chiefly in the Levant and Egypt².

The French consul Benoît Astier received him at Larnaca on 10 February 1785¹. His first stay ran to 22 February, and Gilet judges that it was not favourable for drawing. On 14 March Astier wrote that Cassas had lodged with him until the ship La Poulette sailed¹.

Cassas's list for the Voyage pittoresque gives 13 of its 300 numbers to Cyprus, among them Nicosia, Idalion, Amathus and three views of Bellapais, with the cloister and a tomb. Eleven survive, as drawings made on the spot in 1785, as watercolours mostly made in Rome, or as engravings¹. His itinerary also names Saint-Hilarion¹. A watercolour is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Tours¹. Cassas died at Versailles in November 1827³.