Le Bruyn. Voyage au Levant. 1700. folio. modern half calf

LE BRUYN, CORNELIS

Voyage au Levant, c'est-à-dire, dans les principaux endroits de l'Asie Mineure, dans les isles de Chio, Rhodes, Chypre, etc. Delft: Henri de Kroonevelt, 1700

FIRST FRENCH EDITION, folio (332 x 204mm.), engraved frontispiece, portrait, folding map and 97 plates, many folding, engraved illustrations in the text, recent half calf over marbled boards, some browning, fraying, and repaired tears

Cornelis le Bruyn, the Dutch painter and traveller, spent some years between 1678 and 1685 in the Levant. He was primarily a landscape artist and this manifests itself in several fine panoramas. The costume plates are mostly of different types of Greek and Turkish head-dresses.

LITERATURE:

cf. Blackmer 225, Contominas 100, and Weber 402 (all second French edition, 1714); Cobham-Jeffery, p.7

PROVENANCE:

Greece and the Levant: A Private Library, sale in these rooms, 13 November 2008, lot 127