Ideal view of the statue of Hercules, the pyramid and the Octagon in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, northern Hesse, Germany.

Etching, 67,5 x 145 cm, without any mentions of the title, engraver, printer, etc. (small split on the central fold and on the left side, otherwise good condition).

Construction of the Bergpark, or "mountain park" (a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2013), began at the end of the 17th c. at the behest of Charles I (1654-1730), Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. It took about 150 years.
Based on the design of Italian architect and landscape artist Giovanni Francesco Guerniero and created by various artists and craftsmen, the set is presently made of various undecorated stones, consisting of a pyramid, topped by a statue of Hercules, resting on an octagonal building (known as the "Octagon", built in 1701-1711) carried on a grotto from which a waterfall runs down a slope for 350 metres and arrives in a basin surrounded by other grottoes. The statue, one of the earliest copper-wrought monumental statues in the world, was built in the years 1713 to 1717. Today "Hercules" refers not only to the statue, but the whole monument.
Several projects and "ideal views" were made for the Bergpark by Guerniero, the Van Nickelens and others, showing the top of the octagon with statues and the base of the grotto with alcoves. The Van Nickelens were painters from Haarlem, Jan Van Nickelen (1655-1721 Kassel) and his son Rymer (ca. 1690-after 1740 Bavaria), commissioned ca. 1720-1730 by Charles I a series of 8 painted panoramic ideal views (ca. 170 x 150 cm). Rymer complemented the series with 3 more views after his father's death in 1721 and produced few paintings after this series (85 x 75 cm). Among these paintings one is very close to our document, with the octagon and Hercules monument in the middle, its hedged base and the whole decorated with statues and flanked by a temple on each side on pyramid-shaped hills.
Our anonymous plate shows the monument and the pyramid supporting the statue adorned with 33 statues on various levels (10 at the level of the grotto, 10 above the façade of the octagon, 13 on the pyramid including the bust of the Landgrave Charles I). It could have been a plate of one of the editions of Guerniero's illustrated book ("Delineatio montis [...]", Kassel, 1705, 1706, 1727 and 1749; with engravings by G.G. Frezza and A. Specchi but the large dimension of our unsigned, untitled print does not seem to fit.
Ref. https://kupferstichkabinett.museum-kassel.de/319733/0/0/0/s12/0/100/objekt.html ("The engraving is not found in any edition of the "Delineatio Montis" of 1706. The engraving was printed from three plates on three sheets and then mounted together. The two lateral representations are not related to the central view"). - https://datenbank.museum-kassel.de/0/0/0/0/0/0/100/suchergebnis.html?ssw=guerniero&sswf=kuenstler&aktion=stichwortsuche. - https://altemeister.museum-kassel.de/33731/0/0/147/s6/0/100/objekt.html. - https://altemeister.museum-kassel.de/126524/. - https://architekturzeichnungen.museum-kassel.de/11244/0/0/0/s1/0/100/objekt.html. - https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/artists/333068