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Object 2: Christian Mechel, Marquard Wocher: Ascent of Mont Blanc
Etching, watercolour, 1790

Mont Blanc, situated on the border between France and Italy, is the highest mountain in the Alps at 4810 metres and one of the most dangerous. For a long time it was also considered cursed by the locals. In 1760, the famous Geneva naturalist Horace Bénédict de Saussure came to Chamonix for the first time and offered a large reward to anyone who could find a route to the summit. On 8 August 1786, the doctor Jacques Balmat and his mountain guide Michel Gabriel Paccard succeeded in making the first ascent from Chamonix. Knowing this route, Saussure himself stood on the summit of Mont Blanc just one year later. The present sheet shows that ascent.