Willmann was a student of Frommel and a professor at the Frankfurt School of Fine Arts. As for most artists of his time, the fascination exercised by the Paris of the Second Empire, a universal place of artistic creation, inspired him to write this famous and heroic composition with a burin, offered to Chalcographie by Emperor Napoleon III.
This heroic conception of the urban landscape, seen from the sky, is in the tradition of classical engravers and also announces, by the scale of the format of the leaf, the great compositions that will be the masterpieces of universal exhibitions where the mastery of a technique combined with the talent of interpretation attracted the votes of the general public.
