Basan, F(rançois)
Dictionnaire des graveurs anciens et modernes depuis l’origine de la gravure; avec une notice des principales estampes qu’ils ont gravées. suivi de catalogues des oeuvres de Jacques jordans, & de Corneille Visscher. Premiere Partie (Second Partie) (with) Catalogue des estampes gravées d’après P.R.Rubens … nouvelle edition (Troisieme Partie).
Paris, De Lormel (and others) 1767.
Full Description
8vo. 3 vols. (2) + iv + 342 + (2)pp; (4) + pp 343-592 + (2) + 52pp; (2) + lx + 264 + (4)pp. Contemporary quarter calf, marbled boards, the spines worn and chipped, one outer corner damaged (an English binding of the period). Book labels of A.N.L.Munby (1913-1974), librarian and book historian, and bookplates of Michael Jaffé (1923-1997), Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and authority on the painter Rubens.
First edition. The best-known eighteenth century French reference book on engravings, compiled by Pierre-François Basan (1723-1797), himself an engraver and print dealer. Basan’s third volume is a revised and enlarged version of the earlier publication by Robert Hecquet cataloguing engravings after Rubens (see item ), and useful as such, but it is obvious that where Basan’s text is based on that prepared by Hecquet, both here and in the associated listings of engravings after Jordaens and after Visscher, it is distinctly superior to the parts of the first and second volumes where Basan did not have an earlier text by Hecquet to help him. Cicognara 2148 (Dictionnaire, 1789 edition), 4433 (this edition of the Catalogue … estampes … P.P.Rubens).