Nicolas Xavier WILLEMIN
Monuments français inédits pour servir à l'histoire des arts depuis le VIe siècle jusqu'au commencement du XVIIe. Choix de costumes civils et militaires, d'armes, armures, instruments de musique, meubles de toute espèce, et de décorations intérieures et extérieures des maisons, dessinés, gravés et coloriés d'après les originaux, par N. X. Willemnin (...), classés chronologiquement et accompagnés d'un texte historique et descriptif par André Pottier[Unpublished French Monuments to Serve the History of the Arts from the Sixth Century to the Beginning of the Seventeenth. A Selection of Civil and Military Costumes, Weapons, Armour, Musical Instruments, Furniture of Every Kind, and Interior and Exterior Decorations of Houses, Drawn, Engraved, and Coloured after the Originals by N. X. Willemin (...), Arranged Chronologically and Accompanied by a Historical and Descriptive Text by André Pottier]
Mlle Willemin|Paris 1839|29 x 45.5 cm|2 volumes reliés
First edition and definitive and posthumous edition, arranged in strict chronological order, of a very rare iconographic series whose publication had begun as early as 1806 in somewhat disorderly instalments, but was never completed (only 49 instalments had appeared at the author’s death).
Cf Brunet V, 1453.
Work illustrated with 300 plates: lithographed and watercoloured title-frontispiece and 149 engraved plates, most finely hand-coloured, for the first volume; 150 plates for the second.
Contemporary bindings in half cherry-red morocco-grained shagreen with corners, spines with five raised bands decorated with blind fillets and panels, some minor rubbing to spines a
€3,000