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Recueil d'estampes d'aprés les plus beaux tableaux et d'aprés les plus beaux desseins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du Roy, dans celuy de Monseigneur le duc d'Orleans, & dans d'autres cabinets. Divisé suivant les differentes écoles; avec un abbregé de la vie des peintres, & une description historique de chaque tableau. Tome premier. Contenant l'école romaine. (Tome second. Contenant la suite de l'école romaine, et l'ecole venitienne.)
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RECUEIL D'ESTAMPES ...
Recueil d'estampes d'aprés les plus beaux tableaux et d'aprés les plus beaux desseins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du Roy, dans celuy de Monseigneur le duc d'Orleans, & dans d'autres cabinets. Divisé suivant les differentes écoles; avec un abbregé de la vie des peintres, & une description historique de chaque tableau. Tome premier. Contenant l'école romaine. (Tome second. Contenant la suite de l'école romaine, et l'ecole venitienne.)
A Paris (Place), de l'Imprimerie Royale,, 1729. (1742.)
2 vols ; 55.0 cm. (2°)
i: [2], viii, 32 p., 88 [i.e. 87] pl.
ii: [2], [33]--34, *33--*34, 35--69, 68--71, [1] p., [92] pl.
First edition, second issue, of the celebrated 'Cabinet de Crozat', so called because of the large part that the famous art collector and patron of Watteau, Pierre Crozat (1665--1740), played in its publication. The work set new standards for art publishing, both in terms of scholarship and for its faithfulness to the paintings and drawings that it reproduced. Written and edited by the great print connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694--1774), it is not only the first true catalogue raisonné of Italian painting in the modern sense of the term, documenting the authenticity and provenance of all the finest works of the Italian masters on French soil; it is also a tour de force of the engraver's art, including many engravings in which the quality of reproduction, of Crozat's drawings especially, reached new heights of finesse. The latter was achieved by means of a refinement of the chiaroscuro woodcut, first used as a medium for the reproduction of old master drawings by Ugo da Carpi in the 16th century, but here printed with copperplate etchings to convey line that is distinct from the gradations of tone built up through the superimposition of multiple woodblocks. It is hardly surprising that when Pierre-François Basan issued another edition of the work in 1763, he abandoned all but three of the chiaroscuros, choosing the much simpler - though still very new - method of aquatint lavis, which he had Francois Charpentier apply directly to the Comte de Caylus's original etched coppers. For further details of the work, of the leading engravers who contributed to it, and the long gestation of the second volume, see C.H. von Heinecken, Idée generale d'une collection complette d'estampes (Leipzig & Vienna, 1771), pp. 76--9; also Christopher Lloyd & Tanya Ledger, Art and its images, exh. cat., Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford 1975), pp. 84--7. For details of Crozat's originally much more ambitious plan to include works from collections outside France and to cover all the great schools of painting, see Francis Haskell, The painful birth of the art book, 1987, pp. 18--57. An earlier issue has explanatory text relating to the Roman School only (i.e. pl. 1--137) and a variant title-page to the second volume reading '... Tome Premier. Contenant L'Ecole Romaine. Seconde Partie.' (see the copy in the Royal Academy of Arts Library). In tom. I there are ter pl. 3 and the pairs of plates, 52 and 53, 54 and 55, 56 and 57 are printed on one double sheet for each pair; the plates in tom. II numbered 89--90, 90*, 91--137, [138--178].
Copy Notes With the second front free-endpaper of tome II inscribed in ink J'ay aquis ce fameux recuëil d'estampes a la mort de Mr de A. Julien. / Ces deux volumes [erased passage] en 1766. A probably similar erased inscription occurs at the same place in tome I together with, on a rear-endpaper, No.149. 2 volme / 200 ff in ink, and Anciennes Epreuves in pencil.
Binding Contemporary C18th mottled calf, blind-ruled borders, gilt-tooled spines, red morocco labels.
Reference Number 3126
Additional Names Julien, De A.; Crozat, Joseph Antoine, Marquis de Tugny (1696--1740); Crozat, Pierre (1661--1740); Mariette, Pierre-Jean (1694--1774)
Recueil d'estampes d'aprés les plus beaux tableaux et d'aprés les plus beaux desseins qui sont en France dans le cabinet du Roy, dans celuy de Monseigneur le duc d'Orleans, & dans d'autres cabinets. Divisé suivant les differentes écoles; avec un abbregé de la vie des peintres, & une description historique de chaque tableau. Tome premier. Contenant l'école romaine. (Tome second. Contenant la suite de l'école romaine, et l'ecole venitienne.)
A Paris (Place), de l'Imprimerie Royale,, 1729. (1742.)
2 vols ; 55.0 cm. (2°)
i: [2], viii, 32 p., 88 [i.e. 87] pl.
ii: [2], [33]--34, *33--*34, 35--69, 68--71, [1] p., [92] pl.
First edition, second issue, of the celebrated 'Cabinet de Crozat', so called because of the large part that the famous art collector and patron of Watteau, Pierre Crozat (1665--1740), played in its publication. The work set new standards for art publishing, both in terms of scholarship and for its faithfulness to the paintings and drawings that it reproduced. Written and edited by the great print connoisseur Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694--1774), it is not only the first true catalogue raisonné of Italian painting in the modern sense of the term, documenting the authenticity and provenance of all the finest works of the Italian masters on French soil; it is also a tour de force of the engraver's art, including many engravings in which the quality of reproduction, of Crozat's drawings especially, reached new heights of finesse. The latter was achieved by means of a refinement of the chiaroscuro woodcut, first used as a medium for the reproduction of old master drawings by Ugo da Carpi in the 16th century, but here printed with copperplate etchings to convey line that is distinct from the gradations of tone built up through the superimposition of multiple woodblocks. It is hardly surprising that when Pierre-François Basan issued another edition of the work in 1763, he abandoned all but three of the chiaroscuros, choosing the much simpler - though still very new - method of aquatint lavis, which he had Francois Charpentier apply directly to the Comte de Caylus's original etched coppers. For further details of the work, of the leading engravers who contributed to it, and the long gestation of the second volume, see C.H. von Heinecken, Idée generale d'une collection complette d'estampes (Leipzig & Vienna, 1771), pp. 76--9; also Christopher Lloyd & Tanya Ledger, Art and its images, exh. cat., Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford 1975), pp. 84--7. For details of Crozat's originally much more ambitious plan to include works from collections outside France and to cover all the great schools of painting, see Francis Haskell, The painful birth of the art book, 1987, pp. 18--57. An earlier issue has explanatory text relating to the Roman School only (i.e. pl. 1--137) and a variant title-page to the second volume reading '... Tome Premier. Contenant L'Ecole Romaine. Seconde Partie.' (see the copy in the Royal Academy of Arts Library). In tom. I there are ter pl. 3 and the pairs of plates, 52 and 53, 54 and 55, 56 and 57 are printed on one double sheet for each pair; the plates in tom. II numbered 89--90, 90*, 91--137, [138--178].
Copy Notes With the second front free-endpaper of tome II inscribed in ink J'ay aquis ce fameux recuëil d'estampes a la mort de Mr de A. Julien. / Ces deux volumes [erased passage] en 1766. A probably similar erased inscription occurs at the same place in tome I together with, on a rear-endpaper, No.149. 2 volme / 200 ff in ink, and Anciennes Epreuves in pencil.
Binding Contemporary C18th mottled calf, blind-ruled borders, gilt-tooled spines, red morocco labels.
Reference Number 3126
Additional Names Julien, De A.; Crozat, Joseph Antoine, Marquis de Tugny (1696--1740); Crozat, Pierre (1661--1740); Mariette, Pierre-Jean (1694--1774)