Saint-Non | Voyage pittoresque... de Naples et de Sicile, Paris, 1781-6, first edition, 5 vols, contemporary calf gilt

Jean Claude Richard, Abbé de Saint-Non

Voyage pittoresque ou description des rouyaumes de Naples et de Sicile. Paris: imprimerie Clousier, 1781-1786

FIRST EDITION, 5 volumes, folio (518 x 330mm.), 305 engraved plates, maps and plans, many plates with 2 views, some maps folding, numerous engraved illustrations, vignettes, head- and tail-pieces, contemporary calf gilt, spines with raised bands in seven compartments, morocco labels in second, third, and fourth compartments, gilt edges, marbled endpapers, extremities slightly rubbed, one morocco label detached

"One of the monuments of French eighteenth-century book production" (Blackmer). Jean Claude Richard de Saint-Non went to Italy in 1759 and studied art and architecture in Rome where he met the artists Fragonard and Hubert-Robert, who were among those who contributed drawings for this work. He travelled to Naples with them in the spring of 1760, spending several weeks in Naples itself, as well as visiting Paestum, Pompeii and Herculaneum, where he drew copies of murals and antiquities. On his return to Paris in 1761 preparation of the plates was put in hand under the direction of Jean Benjamin de Laborde, co-author with Zurlauben of the equally monumental Tableaux...de la Suisse. However the cost of such a lavish production ruined Saint-Non and hastened his death in 1791.

The magnificent engraved plates include maps, views of Naples and its environs, neighbouring towns, Vesuvius, churches, palaces and other buildings, catacombs, temples, tombs, grottos, ancient and Renaissance works of art, and many other architectural and scenic subjects, after Cochin, Fragonard, Hubert-Robert, Saint-Non and others. The descriptive text is by Dominique Vivant-Denon.

PROVENANCE:

P. Hussey Esq., bookplate

LITERATURE:

Blackmer 1473; Cohen-de Ricci 928-930; Brunet V, 55-56; Berlin Kat. 1904