Attributed to Louis de Lincler

The present double-sided study and 1953.5 belong to a group of landscape views depicting various towns along the Loire, including Angers, Orléans and Nantes, from a vellum sketchbook. These landscape views have previously been attributed to Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), Israel Silvestre (1621-1691), and Georg Hoefnagel (1542-1600).
It seems that these views were the work of the little-known artist L(ouis) De Lincler, a French draughtsman of the second half of the seventeenth century. De Lincler apparently traveled along the Loire Valley, recording in his sketchbook topographical views of Angers, Orléans and Nantes. Comparable drawings by the same hand are in the British Museum (1910,0212.108-110) and the Musee Carnavalet, Paris. The seventeenth century engraver Francois Collignon produced a series of etchings after topographical views by De Lincler, including a print after the view of Angers in the British Museum (1910,0212.109). De Lincler also may have been commissioned by Caspar Merian and his father, Matthias Merian, who lived in Paris in 1612-1615, to provide models for illustrations in their large topographical publications, particularly the Topographia Galliae (1547-1616), to which Hollar also contributed. Although the Morgan drawing of Tours shows only a part of a panoramic view, it must have served as the basis for Merian's illustration of the city.
The panoramic view of Tours was taken from the hill of St. Symphorien and shows the cathedral Saint-Gatien and the Chateau de la Ville on the opposite bank as well as the Pont d'Etudes spanning the Loire and Cher rivers with the Ile Aucard. A detail of the bridge has been drawn at the upper left of the sheet.
On the verso is a view of Amboise depicting the chateau seen from the Loire river. Amboise with its is only 12 miles east of Tours suggesting the execution of these studies may have been sequential. The two massive round towers, the Tour des Minimese and the Tour Hurtault, are visible, as is the gothic logis du Roi built by Charles VIII at the end of fifteenth century.