Vues d'Italie, de Sicile et d'Istrie

First edition of this rare album, published in Lyon in 1861 by the press of Louis Perrin, illustrated with 15 line-engraved plates under captioned tissue guards. At the front appears a facsimile of the portrait of Chenavard drawn by Ingres in Rome in 1818; the remaining plates, engraved by Dubouchet, Séon and Thomassin, reproduce a selection of drawings made during his formative journey through Italy, Sicily and Istria.

Contemporary half green calf with corners, spine with four raised bands outlined in gilt dots and decorated with double gilt rules and floral tools, green paper boards framed with a triple gilt fillet, gilt title at the centre of the upper board, marbled endleaves and pastedowns. Some surface wear to the spine; corners restored. An attractive copy, with Chenavard’s wet stamp on the title-page.

Between 1816 and 1818, Chenavard travelled through Italy with several young architects of his generation, among them Augustin-Nicolas Caristie, Jean-Aimé Moutier, François-Alexandre Duquesney and Henri Van Cleemputte. Rome, Naples, Sicily and Istria filled the sketchbooks whose original drawings are now preserved in the library of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art. The medallion on the title-page, representing the Temple of Augustus and Rome at Pola, illustrates this passage from the Italian peninsula towards the Adriatic.

More than forty years passed before Chenavard finally had a selection of these studies engraved and published. In the meantime, he had spent the greater part of his career in Lyon, first as architect to the department of the Rhône and later as a professor at the École des beaux-arts; by the time the album appeared, the journey of 1816-1818 had become a distant episode of his youth. He chose to preserve the views drawn on the spot, the dedication to Caristie, who had shared part of the journey, and, above all, the portrait Ingres had made of him in Rome in 1818.

The portrait restores the narrative to its own time: in 1861, by choosing it, Chenavard presents himself not as the man he had become, but as he was when he was still discovering Italy; the ageing architect thus places at the opening of his album the face of the young man who had seen these landscapes for the first time.