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

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 and joints, one joint of volume 1 split at foot, double blind fillet border on marbled paper boards, comb-marbled endpapers and pastedowns, bindings of the period. 

Pleasing copy, complete with its 300 plates.

The entire life of the draughtsman and engraver Nicolas-Xavier Willemin (1763-1833) was devoted to the study and graphic reproduction of Greek, Roman, Etruscan, Egyptian, Oriental and French antiquities.

This vast undertaking, which led to the publication of numerous collections, is marked by two features uncommon for the period: on the one hand, a very broad horizon of interests, extending beyond the Greek and Roman civilisations to include the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the arts of Eastern peoples (Moors, Persians, etc.); on the other, a keen interest in the decorative arts, in all the objects of daily life capable of revealing the character of different epochs and civilisations. In this way, he was part of the wider movement for the recognition and preservation of the "antiquités nationales" initiated during the Revolution by figures such as Lenoir and Millin, which lies at the origin of the notion of "heritage" in our recent culture.