Dodart, Denis

Letterpress title with engraved vignette, engraved frontispiece of the Académie Royale des Sciences by and after Sebastien Le Clerc and printed by Goyton, engraved historiated headpiece, tailpiece, and initial after and by Le Clerc. Illustration: 39 very fine full-sheet engraved plates (unnumbered) after Nicolas Robert by Robert (28) and Abraham Bosse (11). About ten plates with early brief identifications or other annotations, one within platemark.

Broadsheets (22 1/8 x 17 in.; 564 x 432 mm). Binding: Retrospective red morocco in contemporary French style, spines gilt in eight compartments with repeated fleur-de-lis tool, covers with gilt French fillet border and frame, gilt edges, old endpapers.



Some offsetting, occasional light browning or marginal soiling to text. Extremities rubbed.

Blunt, pp. 118–119; Bridson & Wendel, Printmaking in the Service of Botany 16; Brunet II:785; De Belder sale 107; Graesse II:415; Hunt 343; Nissen 502; An Oak Spring Flora, p. 168; Plesch sale 210; Pritzel 2341

Some offsetting, occasional light browning or marginal soiling to text. Extremities of binding rubbed.
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A very good, large copy of the first edition of "one of the great books in the history of botanical illustration, where all the technical resources of engraving were utilized in presenting the plants as accurately as possible" (Hunt). Memoires pour servir à l'Histoire des Plantes was intended as the introductory volume—essentially a prospectus—for the encyclopedic Histoire des plants conceived by the Académie Royale des Sciences but never completed or formally published. This represents the first publication of the Nicolas Robert plates, which are ranked by consensus as among the finest botanical engravings ever produced.

The Académie Royale des Sciences was founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the behest of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a favored minister to the King in many offices. A comprehensive natural history of plants was one of the first endeavors discussed by the Académie, and when the botanist Denis Dodart was elected to membership in 1673, the project was placed under his direction. The frontispiece depicts a meeting of the Académie in the Royal Library at Versailles, with Louis XIV and Colbert in attendance. This is the first published illustration of an assembly of a learned society.