Last month we digitised the fantastic Recueil de Desseins Ridicules, 1695 by George Focus (shelfmark SRD.1.2) for an order, but were so fascinated by the images that we thought it worthy of further investigation. However, all we have really been able to find out is that he was born in Chateaudun circa 1639/40, that he was influenced by Nicolas Poussin & Gaspard Dughet & that he spent much of his adult life insane & “Confined to small houses” where he died in 1708.
The DIU would like to thank our Volunteer, Noah Salaman, for all the work he did prepping these images to go into the book reader software. We think this book has great potential for a crowd-sourcing project to transcribe & translate the text on each of the drawings- watch this space!
The Book Reader can be viewed at http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/jedr3j
Or, you can zoom in on the full size pages at http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/y3zwbv
