Beth: King Abdulaziz Public Library in Riyadh has unveiled one of its rarest collections of rare books entitled:" pictures from Spain", by David Roberts, in a deluxe edition in full natural colors.

The book is among the library's Holdings, and only about thirty copies of it have been printed, and it contains various paintings by the famous British painter David Roberts that he had painted during his tour of Andalusia in 1832-1833, depicting a number of famous landmarks that he visited in Spain.

The book contains (26) paintings printed in stone and colored by hand, and was supervised by David Roberts himself, and most of the paintings of the book were devoted to the Arab-Islamic monuments and palaces in Andalusia, it contains very magnificent and beautiful views of Granada and the Alhambra Palace and the fine details of the inscriptions that characterized the Islamic architecture in Andalusia.

The size of the leaves in the book is (53-38) CM, it is bound in leather, and the protective part of the heel of the book has raised edges and has a gilded title and gilded and non-gilded decorations. The words are printed in black, decorated at the edges of the picture with drawings, there are also geometric drawings on the covers, all the corners of the book are polished and the edges are gilded.

In the 26 paintings included in the book, The author painted various landscapes in Andalusia, including: the Seville windmill, the entrance to the city of Madrid, the Toledo bridge, Madrid, the portico of an old mosque in Cordoba, Gibraltar, and the bullfight in Seville.

The King Abdulaziz Public Library acquired the book in 1997, where it was obtained from the library of King Don Carlos I of Portugal.

The author of the book, David Roberts, who lived between (1796-1864), is one of the most prominent British painters of the nineteenth century, and he is one of the few working in this art in his time, and he made his style of watercolor painting, and it is easy to identify his style with lithography, which was the only prevailing printing in that era, to produce accurate images identical to the original, Roberts was a scene painter at the Royal Theater in Edinburgh, and produced a set of oil paintings that included scenes from England, Scotland, France, and Belgium .

Roberts has toured Egypt and Syria and published a huge six-volume book, three of which are for drawings in Egypt, and three for drawings in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.

Among his most notable paintings are: the Grand Staircase, the Seville Cathedral, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, a view in Cairo, the cities of North Africa, the Alexandria obelisk.