In the mentality of the Modern Age, the figurative depiction of a monarchy surrounded by the continents was seen as an expression of power. And the fact that Europe, Asia, Africa and America appear in this representation is akin to saying that the monarchy’s power embraced the whole world.
 
When painting these allegories, Juan Antonio Salvador Carmona followed the the classic precepts as compiled by the Italian iconographer Cesare Ripa (1560-1622) in the late sixteenth century in his celebrated treatise Iconologia overo Descrittione Dell’imagini Universali.
 
In 1786 Juan Antonio Salvador Carmona engraved a short series of plates representing The Four Parts of the World (Europe, Asia, Africa and America), based on the paintings of the same title by Luca Giordano (1634-1705) kept at the Royal Palace. As recorded at the bottom of the engraving, he dedicated these beautiful prints to Prince Charles (1748-1819), the future King Charles IV, which earned him the title of Engraver of the Prince of Asturias’s Chamber, a new post that had never been conferred before. In 1789, when the prince acceded to the throne as King Charles IV, Juan Antonio Salvador Carmona became Engraver to the King’s Chamber.
 
This four-plate suite is an excellent example of the feature that best defines his output: an impeccable rendering of the effects of chiaroscuro. The original plates are kept at Spain’s National Chalcography.
 
Apart from the individual titles, all four engravings have the same inscriptions: on the bottom left corner, “painted by Lucas Jordan”; on the bottom right corner, “engraved by Juan Ant. Salvador Carmona”; under the title, the dedication: “Dedicated to HM the PRINCE by Juan Ant. Salvador Carmona. The original painting exists in the Royal Palace of Madrid”.
 
In this engraving, made using

 intaglio 

intaglio is not, strictly speaking, an engraving method as such, rather a type of visual language characterising European printing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; it is the result of the conjunction of two techniques of chalcographic engraving—

 etching 

an indirect techniqueof chalcographic engraving. The metal plate is first covered with a protective varnish, on which the engraver draws with an etching needle, ensuring that it touches the surface of the metal plate without producing any furrows. Once the drawing has been made on the varnished surface, the plate is submerged in a diluted acid bath which acts on the exposed metal parts from which the varnish has been removed by the etching needle. Once the lines have been etched, and the plate is taken out of the acid and the remaining varnish removed using a soft cloth and alcohol, it is ready to be inked up and pressed.

and the

 burin 

the basic engraving tool, a burin is used to engrave on a perfectly smooth metal plate, or on a wood block when used in the woodcut process. It essentially consists of a tempered steel rod with a square, triangular or lozenge-shaped cross section. The cutting edge of the rod is bezelled at an angle while the other end is set diagonally into a wooden mushroom-shaped handle. Varying kinds of cross sections in the cutting edge are used to obtain different types of engraved lines.

—and a normalised method for drawing lines, based on line theory. The concept of intaglio can only be fully understood as the overlap of all these aspects, some technical and others aesthetic.

, the main character is an allegory of Africa. On the right is a standing female figure draped with animal skins, with her breasts uncovered. At her feet, a group of little black children and maids are playing with various African animals, such as an elephant, lion and tiger. Opposite Africa, on the left of the engraving, we see a Roman general, accompanied by his army, a clear allusion to the conquests of the troops of the Roman Empire in Africa. The scene is rounded off with a mountainous landscape and a prominent cloudscape behind which we can see the rays of the sun breaking through.
 
This series portrays the European view of the four continents known at the beginning of the Modern Age. Naturally, the images are imagined portraits based on stereotypes and fragmentary visions of each continent, but they do include many of their characteristic elements and have served as support for other later figurations and symbols.