Price: £440.00

• Date: c. 1781
• Condition: AAA
• Colour: B/W
• Size: 42 x 60 cms.

Publication: Voyage Pittoresque ou Description des Royaumes de Naples et de Sicilie de l’ Abbe de Saint- Non, Paris 1781-1786.

Engraver: Saint-Non. Abbe Jean- Claude Richard de,

A section of the Peutinger Table depicting the Roman Empire from Rome in the north to Sicily in the south. The map shows the major Roman roads leading from Rome with palaces, baths, temples and other places of interest along the way. Analysis of the Peutinger table allowed archeologists to recently discover a hitherto unknown palace which was buried under ash at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE.
Abbe Saint-Non (1727-1791) went to Italy in 1759 and studied art and architecture in Rome where he met the artists Fragonard and Hubert-Robert, who were among those who contributed drawings to this work. He travelled to Naples with them in the spring of 1760 spending several weeks in Naples itself, as well as visiting Paestum, Pompeii and Herculaneum, where he drew copies of wall-paintings and antiquities. On his return to Paris in 1761, preparation of the plates was put in hand at the direction of Jean Benjamin de Laborde, co-author with Zurlauben of Tableaux de la Suisse. The plates show a wide range of buildings and scenes in Southern Italy and Sicily, concentrating on the extant classical remains but also illustrating more recent structures. Major engravers of the time worked on the book: Berthault, Choffard, Delafosse, Duplessi-Bertaux, Germain, Guttenberg, Marillier, Saint-Aubin, and others. The cost of such a lavish production ruined Saint-Non financially and hastened his death in 1791.

Fold as given, small hole in blank area expertly repaired.

RARE.