De pictura; carmina elegantissima

by Charles-Alphonse Dufresnoy and François Marie de Marsy | edited by Christian Adolf Klotz

Leipzig: Societatis Librariorum, 1770

[24], 64 p. | 8vo | *^8 **^4 A-D^8 | 182 x 107 mm

A combined edition of Dufresnoy’s De arte graphica and De Marsy’s Pictura, two popular poems on painting, and the only such edition Klotz prepared. His was not the first. First published in the 17th century, “De arte graphica was often printed and compared with” de Marsy’s Pictura (1736), “which is manifestly indebted to Dufresnoy’s” (Allen et al.). The lines in this edition are leaded, as schoolbooks sometimes were to provide room for note taking. ¶ Anne-Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon prepared the first combined edition in 1753, and several more followed through at least 1780. “Now known only to art historians, in the eighteenth century De arte graphica was ubiquitous,” though the passage of time, and evolution of taste and theory in art, altered its appreciation. “De arte graphica stood out as one of the first pan-European art treatises, but by the middle of the eighteenth century it was being overtaken by the rising flood of all kinds of books dealing with art” (Allen et al.).

PROVENANCE: Inserted at end is a 19th-century leaf of manuscript, somewhat critical of Klotz, that lays out a rather impressive publication history of De Marsy's text. ¶ Modern bookplate of Jacques Laget on front paste-down.

CONDITION: Early leather, the spine tooled in gold; red edges; marbled endpapers. ¶ Leather moderately soiled and extremities gently worn.

REFERENCES: VD18 10536930 ¶ Dufresnoy (Christopher Allen, Yasmin Haskell, and Frances Muecke, eds.), De Arte Graphica (Paris, 1668) (Droz, 2005), p. 64 (“Anne-Gabriel Meusnier de Querlon published a French translation in 1740”), 116, 117 (“by the end of the century, although it had become a classic, its leading ideas had been challenged, and the limitations of its doctrine were becoming obvious”)

Item #535