Antique Print of a Ruin in Concepción 'Chile' by D'Urville, circa 1850

The ruins of a church at Concepción, Chile, in a tinted lithograph from Jules Sébastien César Dumont d'Urville's Voyage au Pôle Sud et dans l'Océanie sur les corvettes l'Astrolabe et la Zélée, an expedition narrative published in Paris by Gide et Cie between 1841 and 1855. The plate is lettered "Ruines d'une Église à Concepcion (Chili)" and is marked "Atlas pittoresque" at the upper right, with the work's title at the upper left.

The view is a landscape in soft golden and gray tones. At the left a long standing wall of the ruined church, braced with timber poles and framing, rises above fallen blocks of masonry and heavy undergrowth. A tall palm stands in the center, with agave-like plants and flowers at its foot. On the right a muddy road leads away past a wooden fence toward the arches of a long bridge or aqueduct, a few low houses and a range of hills under a sky of scattered cloud. A small figure walks along the road. Credits for the artist and the lithographer are lettered below the image margins.

The plate belongs to the atlas of views that accompanied the narrative of the French naval voyage of the corvettes Astrolabe and Zélée, issued in the 1840s.