DUMONT, Gabriel-Pierre Martin (ca. 1720--after 1790)
[Détails ... de la basilique de St. Pierre de Rome. c. 1770]
Détails des plus intéressantes parties d'architecture de la basilique de St. Pierre de Rome, levés et dessinés sur le lieu; par Gabriel-Martin Dumont, ...
A Paris (Place), chez l'auteur; et Madame Chereau,, 1763 [i.e. c. 1770].
[6] p., engr. port., [96] pl. ; 54.0 cm. (2°)

Issued as tome I of Dumont's Recueil de plusieurs parties de l'architecture, 3 tomes, c. 1770 (q.v.). The plates are numbered in two main sequences, 1--14 and 1--70; the remaining plates are the portrait of Dumont, three engraved approbations, the engraved 'Catalogue' and eight unnumbered plates. The publication history of the Détails ... de la basilique de St. Pierre is complex, as suggested by the presence in this volume of three approbation leaves dated between December 1763 and August 1766. Its genesis may be traced to August 1762, when a committee appointed by the Académie to examine a number of Dumont's engravings from his drawings made in Rome, reported favourably on them and recommended the publication of further engravings. A note at the foot of plate 8 in the second numbered sequence of the present issue states that as a result of this recommendation, Dumont added seven further plates 'qui completteront cette Suite, de sorte que l'Ouvrage entier contiendra trente Planches.' Further plates were likely soon added to the original thirty and arranged in various suites as Dumont sought to exploit his material; also in the Soane Museum is an earlier, separate issue of the work containing a total of 64 plates (q.v.). By the time of the work's inclusion as the first constituent suite of the Recueil de plusieurs parties de l'architecture the number of plates, including the portrait, final engraved approbation and 'Catalogue' found in all three volumes of the Recueil, had increased to 97 with the addition of the entire first numbered suite and other unnumbered plates; the plates in the second suite are renumbered and some of them retouched. (The 'Catalogue' calls for 92 plates, presumably the main body of the work - engraved plates and text - excluding the 'Catalogue' itself.) A later, separate issue of the work containing 100 engraved plates, represented by the copy in the BAL, can probably be dated to 1774 or after. The identity and order of the plates in the present copy corresponds almost exactly to the BAL description; the unnumbered plates in the BAL copy not present in the Soane copy are those numbered [6], [9], [97] and [98]. See BAL, Early printed books, no. 937; Millard I, pp. 162--164, 169--170; Berlin Kat. 2416.

Copy Notes Soane's set of Dumont's Recueil de plusieurs parties de l'architecture was bought from Josiah Taylor for 9 guineas on 3 November 1814. (Archive 7A/15/30).

Binding C18th mottled sheep, blind triple-ruled borders, gilt-tooled spine with floral motifs, red and black spine labels, forming tom. I of Dumont's Recueil de plusieurs parties de l'architecture.

Reference Number 4110

Additional Names Basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano , Pictorial works; St. Peter's Basilica, Rome