Cassas, Louis François
Azay-Le-Ferron 1756 – 1827 Versailles

Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoenicie, de la Palestine, et de la basse Ægypte [title taken from wrapper of Première livraison].

[Paris, Imprimerie de la République, 1798–1799]

Three volumes, folio (555 × 365 mm):

i: (91) plates, numbered 1–3, 5–7, 9–10, 14–15, 18, 20–23, 23 bis, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 35–38, 41–42, 45, 53–55, 57–58, 65–68, 71, 74–75, 77, 79–81, 84–87, 89–91, 93–94, 98–99, 101–102, 104–106, 108–109, 109 bis, 110–114, 116–118, 118 bis, 119–127, 127 [i.e. 127 bis], 128–129, 131–132, 134–135, 137, of which thirteen folding (nos. 24, 26–28, 30–31, 33, 38, 53, 58, 68, 71, 91) and the others full-page. without text (see below); a printed bifolium (paginated 1–4) with above caption title and headings ‘Première Livraison, composée de six planches’ and ‘Explication provisoire de chacune des six Planches’, is the only letterpress present.

ii: (31) plates, numbered 1, 3–4, 15–17, 27–30, 34, 54, 56–57, 59, 61, 64, 67–69, 76–80, 82, 85, 87, 91, 94, 96, of which seven double-page or folding (nos. 3, 4, 15–17, 30, 96) and the others full-page. Plus duplicates of plates 15 and 69.

iii: (56) plates, numbered 2–4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 19–25, 29–30, 32–36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 46–47, 52–55, 58, 63, 65–66, 69, 74, 76–77, 81–82, 87–88, 89, 91–92, 95–99, 101–102, 104–106, of which eight folding (nos. 8, 19–20, 58, 81, 91, 97–98) and the others full-page. Plus duplicates of plates 104, 105, and 106.

An untrimmed copy, with minor wear along some sheet edges; occasional spotting in margins, other­wise in fine state of preservation.

preserved in a modern cloth box.

Fine set of this uncompleted work documenting ancient sites and scenes from daily life observed during the author’s travels in 1785–1787 through the Ottoman Empire.

The son of a land surveyor, Louis François Cassas, had studied the art of surveying antique monuments in the Académie de dessin established by Auguste de Rohan-Chabot in Paris, and latterly in the Académie de France in Rome. In August 1784, he entered the retinue of the French ambassador to the Ottoman court, the collector and traveller Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier, and – commissioned by the ambassador – soon set out on a jour­ney to gather a corpus of drawings to illustrate a text by Choiseul-Gouffier. Cassas returned to Constantinople in January 1786, presented tracings of his drawings to his patron, and travelled on to Rome, where he lingered until 1792, evidently adding drawings to his corpus.¹

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The French Revolution disrupted their project: when Choiseul-Gouffier refused to obey the Conven­tion, his goods in France were seized, and he fled from Constantinople to Russia, where he became Director of the Academy of Arts and Imperial Public Library. Cassas thus lost not only his patron, but also the author who was to write the text for his Voyage pittoresque.

According to a printed prospectus, dated 1798, the Republic interceded and rescued the project: ‘Le Gouvernement, convaincu de l’utilité de cette entreprise pour le progrès des arts et de sa liaison intime avec l’enseignement de l’architecture et les intérêts du com­merce, l’a encouragée avec persévérance au milieu même des crises de la révolution, en ordonnant à ses frais la gravure des planches et l’impression du texte’.² Three authors were appointed to prepare a text: the historian Pierre-Louis Ginguené (1748–1815), for an account of the voyage; the architect Jacques-Guillaume Legrand (1743–1808), for descrip­tions of the sites; and the orientalist Louis Mathieu Langlès (1763–1824), for transcriptions and remarks on the epigraphs. Among the many printmakers employed were Pierre Bacquoy, M.-A. Benoist, Pierre-Gabriel Berthault, and Louis-Jacques Cathelin.³ The plate illustrated (Fig. 1) is a view of an imaginary Egyptian temple, showing a ritual procession and priests burning a sacrifice at an altar. The sculpture of the lioness-headed goddess Wenut at far right is believed to have been inspired by the statue then in the Borghese Collection in Rome (now Paris, Musée du Louvre, 4535).⁴

Between fifty and fifty-five livraisons (about 330 plates) were projected, all to be printed on papier d’Annonay superfin with a small number issued avant la lettre.⁵ The first seven livraisons combined an explanatory text with the plates; thereafter, subscribers received only small folio leaves of text; and following publi­cation of the thirtieth livraison the work was abandoned.⁶

Few copies contain much (if any) text and the number of plates varies from about 170 to 192 (the latter total in an unspecified copy cited by Cohen-De Ricci). This copy contains 178 plates (plus five duplicate plates). The copy in the British Library contains forty leaves of text and 180 plates;⁷ the same number of plates is reported in the Blackmer copy.⁸ The copy in the British Architectural Library contains 179 plates avant la lettre and its cata­loguer specu­lates that the total number of plates published was 183 (all 180 plates present in the British Library copy, plus plates numbered 23 bis and 109 bis in volume i, and a plate numbered 77 bis in volume ii).⁹ Among a collection of documents, manuscript material, and drawings, possibly made by the author, are ‘a letterpress title page, indices, tables for the arrange­ment of prints’ and ‘190 printed proofs’.¹⁰

references Henry Cohen, Guide de l’amateur de livres à gravures du xviiie siècle, edited by Seymour de Ricci (Paris 1912), cols. 204–205; Shirley Howard Weber, Voyages and Travels in Greece, the Near East and Adjacent Regions made previous to the year 1801 (Princeton 1953), p.186 no. 832; Leonora Navari, Greece and the Levant: the catalogue of the Henry Myron Blackmer Collec­tion of books and manuscripts (London 1989), p.63 no. 295; Early printed books, 1478–1840: a cata­logue of the British Architectural Library Early Imprints Collection, Vol. 1, A–D, compiled by Nicholas Savage et al. (London 1994), no. 580; Présence de l’Égypte dans les collections de la Bibliothèque universitaire Moretus Plantin, compiled by Marie-Cécile Bruwier (Namur 1994), pp.140–141 no. 54; Leonora Navari, The Ottoman world: the Şefık E. Atabey Collection, books, manuscripts and maps (London 1998), no. 201 (179 plates)