Blackmer, 342; Ko\u00e7, 145 (third issue of the preface); Atabey, 241 (first issue of the preface); F. Barbier, Le R\u00eave grec de Monsieur de Choiseul. Les voyages d’un Europ\u00e9en des Lumi\u00e8res, Paris, 2010; Brunet, 1, 1847: “Le premier volume de cet \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1ge, \u00e0 l’\u00e9poque o\u00f9 il parut pour la premi\u00e8re fois, \u00e9tait incontestablement, sous le rapport de la gravure, la plus belle production en ce genre qu’on e\u00fbt encore vue; aussi eut-il beaucoup de succ\u00e8s.”; Cohen-de Ricci, col. 238.<\/i><\/p>\n
Second state of the preface, ending with the words <\/span>Exoriare aliquis<\/span><\/i> (see details by Ko\u00e7 and by Blackmer).<\/span><\/p>\n A passionate and refined archaeologist, Marie-Gabriel, comte de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752-1857) was the last ambassador of the French monarchy to the Sublime Porte. He was appointed in 1784. Refusing to return to France during the Revolution, he opposed the appointment of his successor for a year. The Republic put a price on his head and the Jacobins destroyed his collections. He had to seek refuge in Russia with his old adversary Catherine II. Paul I of Russia then appointed him director of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Imperial Library, before Talleyrand intervened to encourage his return to France in 1802.<\/p>\n Talleyrand, met at the Coll\u00e8ge d’Harcourt, had been a dear friend during the heydays of the Ancien R\u00e9gime. “Monsieur de Choiseul is the man I loved most,” wrote Talleyrand in his Memoirs. They had both shared many court intrigues. But it was in the entourage of his cousin the Duc de Choiseul that the talented Choiseul-Gouffier, a good draughtsman and cartographer, learned about Greece from Abb\u00e9 Barth\u00e9l\u00e9my, one of the pillars of Chanteloup, the famous ch\u00e2teau in Touraine where the Duc had been exiled. From April 1776 to January 1777, Choiseul-Gouffier sailed on the Atalante, a frigate captained by a prestigious sailor, the Marquis de Chabert, who was on a scientific mission:<\/p>\n “Choiseul-Gouffier, comme il sied pour un voyage \u00e0 pr\u00e9tention scientifique, ne part pas seulement en compagnie de son valet de chambre, le fid\u00e8le Chartier: il est accompagn\u00e9 d’un secr\u00e9taire, l’ing\u00e9nieur P. Kauffer, d’un architecte sorti de la nouvelle \u00c9cole des Ponts et Chauss\u00e9es, J. Foucherot; d’ l’un dessinateur, Jean-Baptiste Hilair, qui le secondera jusqu’\u00e0 la fin de sa vie” (B. Holtzmann).<\/p>\n Choiseul-Gouffier preferred the discovery of the Levant to the Grand Tour of the young English lords. He brought back an original philhellenic vision, envisaging the creation of an independent Greece on the Morea peninsula under Russian protection. The publication of the first volume earned him a place in the Acad\u00e9mie. In 1784, he was appointed ambassador to the Sublime Porte from where he began a famous collection of antiques that made him the equal of Lord Elgin. Choiseul-Gouffier died in 1817 before the third part of his work, the second of which had appeared in 1809, saw the light of day. These last two volumes were innovative in content. The 1809 volume dealt with the Troad and Asia Minor, which were still little known at the time, while the last volume presented Turkey in a new light, with long passages devoted to the Dardanelles and Istanbul.<\/p>\n The illustrations, mainly by Moreau le jeune, A. de Saint-Aubin, Choffard, Huet, Monnet and the famous Louis-S\u00e9bastien-Fran\u00e7ois Fauvel, comprise a total of 285 figures on 168 plates, some double-page and some folded, showing maps, plans, surveys, sites, costumes and so on. There are also 22 vignettes (head- and tail-pieces), two large fold-out maps, 3 engraved titles and a portrait of the author engraved by M.-F. Dien after Boilly. The typographical table, bound at page 184 of volume II contains the genealogy of the Dardannus family.<\/p>\n A choice copy comprising the first volume in a second printing. It contains the preliminary Discourse in twelve pages ending at the 22nd line. Written by Choiseul-Gouffier in collaboration with Chamfort, the very philhellenic and anti-turkish content of this Discourse had to be toned down after Choiseul-Gouffier’s appointment to the Constantinople embassy.<\/p>\n Plate 50 depicts the Battle of Tchesm\u00e9, won on 6 July 1770 by Count Alexiei Grigorievitch Orlov’s (1737-1807) Russian fleet against a vastly superior Turkish fleet. It was the greatest defeat suffered by the Ottoman Empire since the Battle of Lepanto. The Russian navy was now in control of the Aegean Sea, where it remained for five years. This Russian victory, on the same day as that of Larga and two weeks before that of Kagul, put Catherine II in a strong position for the peace negotiations ending the Russo-Turkish war.<\/p>\n Some occasional spotting, margins of a few rare plates slightly foxed, marginal paper loss on p. 12, plate 119 incorrectly bound after plate 116, plate 125 incorrectly numbered 126. A few rare leaves slightly toned in vol. 2. and vol. 3.<\/p>\n A magnificent copy, uniformly bound, untrimmed and with deckle edges preserved. 2 in 3 volumes, folio (535 x 352mm). Collation et illustration : Volume I : 4 nn.ll., XII, 204 pp., 2 large double page maps (ancient and modern Greece), 126 numbered illustrations 1 – 126 including maps, with plate 110 in first issue with the title Tournoi-turc. Volume II : 4 nn.ll., 346 pp., 34 illustrations numbered 1 to 33 (including 1 folding and plate numbered 8bis), 1 typographical table for page 184. Volume III : engraved portrait frontispiece, 2 nn.ll., 1 nn.l. (introduction by the bookseller Blaise), 12 pp. with Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. le comte de Choiseul-Gouffier by Bon-Joseph Dacier, followed by necrologies and the Table g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des planches des trois volumes, pp. 347-518, illustrations numbered 34 to 157 and plate 76bis (plate 68, large plan of Istanbul, is folding). Uniformly bound in about 1825 in half-red morocco, flat spine with gilt lettering, entirely uncut and with deckle edges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":78084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[552],"product_tag":[1395],"class_list":{"0":"post-78091","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-travel","7":"product_tag-greece","8":"pa_auteur-choiseul-gouffier-m-g-f-a-2","9":"pa_type-de-livre-printed-book","11":"first","12":"instock","13":"shipping-taxable","14":"purchasable","15":"product-type-simple"},"acf":{"artist":" M.-G.-F.-A. CHOISEUL-GOUFFIER","chapeau":"The renaissance of Hellenistic studies","adresse_bibliographique":"Paris, Tillard, puis Blaise l'a\u00een\u00e9, 1782-1809-1822 (1824)","book_type":"Printed book","provenance":"","afficher_prix":""},"yoast_head":"\n
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