Les Ruines des Plus Beaux Monuments de la Grèce
Le Roy, (Julien-David)
Paris. H. L. Guerin & L. F. Delatour, Jean-Luc Nyon and Jean Neaulme. 1758
Sold
First edition of Le Roy's ground breaking work on Greek architecture and remains.
Le Roy's was the first to provide a wide range of illustrations of the major surviving classical remains in Athens and its vicinity and provided much of the initial momentum to the Greek Revival movement in mid-eighteenth-century Europe (the first volume of Stuart & Revett's Antiquities of Athens was not to appear until 1762).
The book is notable for its attractive perspective views, principally of buildings in Athens but also including views of temples at Sunium and Corinth, and of the site of ancient Sparta. The drawings for these were redrawn from Le Roy's original rougher sketches by Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1715 - 1759), a former associate of Piranesi and one of the seminal figures in the early stages of the Greek Revival.
'Le Roy's Ruines, although it does not provide a comprehensive theory and appears to waver between the genres of the treatise on aesthetics, the voyage pittoresque, and the archaeological publication, breaks new ground in providing a synthesis of archaeological findings with a body of architectural theory developed and expanded from the important controversy of Claude Perrault and François Blondel. It also includes material based on new rational and historical attitudes which were being developed by Jacques-François Blondel and which would find their most extreme statement in the work of Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-Louis Boullée. Perhaps most important, Le Roy's treatise provides the theoretical framework and many of the actual models for French neoclassical architecture.' (Millard).
[Brunet III, 1003; Millard French 101].
Le Roy's was the first to provide a wide range of illustrations of the major surviving classical remains in Athens and its vicinity and provided much of the initial momentum to the Greek Revival movement in mid-eighteenth-century Europe (the first volume of Stuart & Revett's Antiquities of Athens was not to appear until 1762).
The book is notable for its attractive perspective views, principally of buildings in Athens but also including views of temples at Sunium and Corinth, and of the site of ancient Sparta. The drawings for these were redrawn from Le Roy's original rougher sketches by Louis-Joseph Le Lorrain (1715 - 1759), a former associate of Piranesi and one of the seminal figures in the early stages of the Greek Revival.
'Le Roy's Ruines, although it does not provide a comprehensive theory and appears to waver between the genres of the treatise on aesthetics, the voyage pittoresque, and the archaeological publication, breaks new ground in providing a synthesis of archaeological findings with a body of architectural theory developed and expanded from the important controversy of Claude Perrault and François Blondel. It also includes material based on new rational and historical attitudes which were being developed by Jacques-François Blondel and which would find their most extreme statement in the work of Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne-Louis Boullée. Perhaps most important, Le Roy's treatise provides the theoretical framework and many of the actual models for French neoclassical architecture.' (Millard).
[Brunet III, 1003; Millard French 101].
pp. xiv, 56; (2), vi, 28. 2 parts in 1 vol. Large folio. (572 x 435 mm). Printed title with large woodcut vignette, leaf with dedication to 'le Marquis de Marigny', 2 leaves with 'Préface', 3 leaves with 'Discours sur l'Histoire de l'Architecture Civile', text and 60 engraved plates by Le Bas, Littret de Montigny, Neufforge and Patte after Le Roy.. Contemporary full mottled calf, boards ruled in blind, banded spine with gilt decoration and the de Luynes crowned lion vignette and red morocco title label in eight compartments, board edges with gilt tooling, marbled endpapers, all edges red.
#43162
