Artwork
The Manner of Transporting Wares on Barges Drawn by a Bellows
The Manner of Transporting Wares on Barges Drawn by a Bellows is a print by the Romanticist artist Filippo Morghen. It dates from 1769 and is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
About this work
Overview
Filippo Morghen’s series of ten etchings, produced in the eighteenth century, presents a fanciful vision of lunar society. The set includes a title page and nine illustrative plates that portray everyday activities and economic practices of imagined moon inhabitants, employing whimsical inventions such as bellows‑driven barges, giant scissors, and pumpkin vessels.
Subject & Meaning
The images depict a community whose transport relies on a massive bellows pulling a barge across water, while residents sit calmly within.
The images depict a community whose transport relies on a massive bellows pulling a barge across water, while residents sit calmly within. Other scenes show oversized tools for hunting fantastical beasts and pumpkin structures serving as homes or fishing boats. These motifs reflect contemporary curiosity about exotic cultures, filtered through the period’s chinoiserie and turquerie aesthetic, and serve as a playful commentary on the limits of human imagination.
Technique & Style
Executed in fine etching, Morghen’s work combines precise line work with intricate cross‑hatching to render texture and depth. The compositions balance detailed figuration with exaggerated, almost caricatured elements, creating a visual narrative that is both technically accomplished and deliberately fantastical, characteristic of Enlightenment-era speculative illustration.
Context
The series belongs to a broader eighteenth‑century fascination with imagined voyages to the moon, a theme that appeared in both literature and visual arts across Europe. By integrating motifs drawn from distorted European notions of Asian, Ottoman, and Native American cultures, the prints echo the period’s decorative trends while offering an early example of speculative, proto‑science‑fiction imagery.
Artist & collection
Title and Dedication Page
A House on Water, and a New Way to Summon Geese by the Beat of a Drum
A new device to cleave wild beasts from Head to Tail
A Savage mounted on a winged Serpent battling with a wild beast resembling a Porcupine
The Manner of sailing by the power of Bellows practiced on that Planet
The Carriages used on the Moon and which move by sails
A Boat That Has for Sails the Wings of a Huge Bird
A Pumpkin Used as a Fishing Boat
