The Complete Folio Plates for Visconti’s Extraordinary Greek & Roman Iconography

Visconti, Le Chevalier E.Q. PLANCHES DE L’ICONOGRAPHIE GRECQUE. Paris: de l’Imprimerie de P. Didot l’Ainé. 1817 [with secondary title page dated 1811]. Large folio [57.5 by 44.5 cm], original plain boards; printed spine label. 1817 title with historiated vignette depicting Lollius Alcamenes dated 1816 finely engraved by François Forster; 1811 title with undated heraldic portrait medallion finely engraved by Raphaël Urbain Massard after a drawing by Pierre Boullion; 58 finely engraved plates [numbered 1–57 and 39*] signed by a variety of artists. [with] Visconti, Le Chevalier E.Q. PLANCHES DE L’ICONOGRAPHIE ROMAINE. Paris: de l’Imprimerie de P. Didot l’Ainé. 1817. Large folio [57.5 by 44.5 cm], original plain boards; printed spine label. Title page with large, unsigned, finely engraved portrait medallion depicting Louis XVIII; 70 finely engraved plates [numbered 1–63, A, B, 19*, 24*, 39*, 64A and 64B] signed by a variety of artists. Two volumes, complete for the plates. Bindings worn at spine, but sound. Foxing throughout, usually moderate. A very good set. The separately published plate volumes for the extraordinary folio edition of Visconti & Mongez’s Iconographie ancienne ou recueil des portraits authentiques des empereurs, rois et hommes illustres de l’antiquité, published between 1808 and 1826. The Iconographie is one of the landmark works of early 19th-century numismatic scholarship and is particularly famous for its outstanding engraved plates. Its main author, Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751–1818), was an internationally recognized classical scholar and draughtsman. As a child he was schooled by his father, Giovan Battista, utilizing the family collection of ancient coins and the sculptures and ancient coins in the Museo Pio Clementino, where Giovan served as its first director. In 1798 Ennio became one of the five consuls of the newly created Roman Republic; a year later, he was summoned to Paris as Conservateur des Antiques in the Louvre. As such he was also Director of the Musée Napoleon, and conceived the imperial project of a classified iconography of the ancient world—a monumental lexicon of classical antiquity. The seven resulting volumes, printed by Didot in his striking new type, are but a mere fragment of the iconography as it was intended. Visconti himself died in 1818, and the final text volumes were prepared under Chevalier Antoine Mongez (1747–1835). (Brunet states that the final volume was published in 1833, not 1826 as indicated on the title.) The work was never completed, but even within this small preliminary field the range is enormous, covering every known, or suspected, king whose portrait has survived, and a variety of portraits of famous men, backed by contemporary references from classical literature. Some of the finest engravers of the day contributed to this work, including Beisson, Dorez, Guttenberg, Lacour, Laurent, Migneret and others. Many of the plates partly or entirely feature ancient coins. The present volumes were not issued with the over 1500 pages of text that accompany the full work. Babelon 130: “E. Quirino Visconti and A. Mongez ... drew on numismatics as a source for their glorious work on the iconography of the ancients.” Brunet 30412: “Ces deux magnifiques iconographies, qui font suite l’une à l’autre, ont été imprimées aux frais de l’Etat, et distribuées en présents.” Cicognara 2717 and 3917. Graesse 370. Hennin 69. Leitzmann 148.