Gazette Drouot logo print
Lot n° 47

DESCAMPS (Jean-Baptiste). The life of the Flemish,...

Estimate :
Subscribers only

DESCAMPS (Jean-Baptiste). The life of the Flemish, German and Dutch painters. In Paris, by C.-A. Jombert then Desaint & Saillant, Pissot, Durand, 1753-1764. 4 vols. in-8, contemporary marbled havana calf, spine with 5 nerves, black title and greeves, ornamented caissons, ornamented edges (binding rubbed and scratched, corners dulled; brown stains in the margins of t. 1 and 4 without ever reaching the engravings or the text, hole in a margin without attaching to the text, 2 corners cut). First edition, illustrated with a frontispiece engraved by Le Bas after Descamps, 2 vignettes with the arms of the dedicatees engraved by Lemire after Descamps, and 168 artist portraits at the head of some biographies, after Charles Eisen, Jean-Baptiste Descamps engraved by René Gaillard, Étienne Ficquet, Michel Aubert, Louis Le Grand, Sébastien Pinssio, Jean-Christophe Teucher, and some unsigned. "It is the remarkable portraits of Ficquet that make this book so valuable. Some of them are little marvels of finesse." (Cohen 287).