L’Italie à vol d’oiseau, ou histoire et description sommaires des principales villes de cette contrée… accompagnées de quarante grandes vues générales dessinées d’après nature par A. Guesdon

Paris, Chez A. Hauser, Éditeur, [1849]-1852

A collection of topographical vistas of Italian cities, drawn by the French painter, lithographer and architect Alfred Guesdon (1808-1867). How Guesdon achieved his meticulously rendered aerial perspectives is exciting debate: one suggestion is that he used aerial photographs, taken by the English photographer Charles Clifford; another is that he employed a geometrical device. The work was published serially and may never have been completed. The present copy contains twenty folios of letterpress (paginated 1-40), a map, and a series of thirty-one numbered tinted lithographed plates. The British Library copy contains additional printed text (paginated 41-84) and plates (numbered 32-42). All other copies known to the writer contain fewer plates and less text: the one in the Bibliothèque nationale de France has forty plates and forty pages of text; the one in the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum has nineteen plates and no text.

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Subjects: Book illustration - Artists, French - Guesdon (Alfred), 1808-1876; Italy - Description and travel; Topographical books and prints - Italy
Authors/Creators: Etiennez, Hippolyte, 1832-1908
Artists/Illustrators: Guesdon, Alfred, 1808-1876
Printers/Publishers: Hauser, A., 1849-1852

Etiennez, Hippolyte
1832 – 1908

L’Italie à vol d’oiseau, ou histoire et description sommaires des principales villes de cette contrée... accompagnées de quarante grandes vues générales dessinées d’après nature par A. Guesdon.

Paris, chez A. Hauser, Éditeur, [1849]–1852

folio (575 × 400 mm), (20) ff. letterpress, signed 1–10² and paginated 1–40, map (lettered Carte générale de l’Italie… Publiée Par J. Andriveau-Goujon Rue du Bac, No. 21 Paris 1850 | Atlas Universel No. 30), series of thirty-one numbered tinted lithographed plates (of 42; see below). Published without a title-page (title and imprint above transcribed from printed wrapper).

Occasional spotting.

binding unbound sheets in a printed wrapper (dated 1852).

A collection of topographical vistas of Italian cities, drawn by the French painter, lithographer and architect Alfred Guesdon (1808–1867), author of similar views of French, Swiss and Spanish cities.¹ The accompanying descriptions are by Hippolyte Etiennez, archivist of the city of Nantes. The work was published serially and seems never to have been completed. The British Library copy contains additional printed text (paginated 41–84) and plates (numbered 32–42);² all other copies known to the writer contain fewer plates and less text: the one in the Bibliothèque nationale de France has forty plates and forty pages of text;³ the one in the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum has nineteen plates and no text.⁴

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View of Messina (‘prise au dessus du Garofalo de Caribde’), by Alfred Guesdon (sheet 575 × 400 mm)

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View of Pompei (‘prise au dessus de l’Odéon et du Théâtre tragique’), by Alfred Guesdon (sheet 575 × 400 mm)

How Guesdon achieved his meticulously rendered aerial perspectives is exciting debate: one suggestion is that he used aerial photographs, taken from a hot-air balloon by the English photographer Charles Clifford;⁵ another is that he employed a geometrical device.⁶

The views are often discussed and reproduced; see, for example

■ Florence: ‘Vue prise au dessus de S.ta maria dell Annunziata’⁷ ■ Lucca: ‘Vue prise au dessus du Chemin de Fer de Pise’⁸ ■ Naples: ‘Vue prise au dessus de l’entrée du Port Marchand’⁹ ■ Padua: ‘Vue prise au dessus de la Porte Coda Lunga’¹⁰ ■ Pompei: ‘Vue prise au dessus de l’Odéon et du Théâtre tragique’¹¹ ■ Rome: ‘Vue prise au dessus du Mont Celio’¹² ■ Siena: ‘Vue prise au dessus du Chemin de Fer et de la Porte Camullia’¹³ ■ Verona: ‘Vue prise au dessus du Castel Vecchio’¹⁴

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reference Catalogue of the Royal Institute of British Architects Library (London 1937), i, p.330 (42 plates; not traced in British Architectural Library online database)

1. Dictionary of Art (London 1996), 4, pp.80–81; Francisco Quirós Linares, Las ciudades españolas en el siglo xix; vistas de ciudades españolas de Alfred Guesdon (Valladolid 1991).

2. British Library, shelfmark 1782.e.12. ‘L’ouvrage paraîtra par livraisons composées de 2 feuilles in-folio à deux colonnes de texte et de 4 grandes vues lithographiées à deux teintes et rehaussées de blanc. – Il y aura 10 livraisons. Prix de la livraison, 18 Fr.’ (text on printed wrapper of British Library copy).

3. Bibliothèque nationale de France, shelfmark K–1543 (title or wrapper dated 1852); Vito Castiglione Minischetti, Giovanni Dotoli, and Roger Musnik, Bibliographie du voyage français en Italie du Moyen Âge à 1914 (Fasano & Paris 2002), p.2275.

4. Victoria & Albert Museum, shelfmark 104 G 6. Plate nos. 7, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41 only.

5. Antonio Gamiz Gordo, ‘Paisajes urbanos vistos desde globo: dibujos de Guesdon sobre fotos de Clifford hacia 1853–55’ in EGA: revista de expresion grafica arquitectonica 9 (2004), pp.110–117. The first documented aerostatic photograph taken from a hot-air balloon is a view of Paris by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) in 1858.

6. Daniela Stroffolino, ‘Alfred Guesdon, “L'Italie à vol d'oiseau” (1849): La veduta a volo d’uccello dalle ali d'Icaro alla mongolfiera’ in Tra oriente e occidente: città e iconografia dal XV al XIX secolo, edited by Cesare de Seta (Naples 2004), pp.67-76; Jean-Marc Besse, ‘European Cities from a Bird’s-Eye View: the Case of Alfred Guesdon’ in Seeing from Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture, edited by Mark Dorrian and Frederic Pousin (London & New York 2013), pp.66–82.

7. L’immagine delle città italiane dal xv al xix secolo, catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palazzo Reale, Naples, 30 October 1998–17 January 1999 (Rome 1998), pp.142–143 no. 27.

8. Le dimore di Lucca, l’arte di abitare i palazzi di una capitale dal Medioevo allo stato unitario, edited by Emilia Daniele (Florence 2007), p.34 fig. 20.

9. Napoli in prospettiva: vedute della città dal xv al xix secolo nelle stampe della Raccolta d’Arte Pagliara, edited by Maria Teresa Penta (Naples 1996), pp.102–103 no. 33; also: La città di Napoli tra vedutismo e cartografia: piante e vedute dal xv al xix secolo, edited by Giulio Pane and Vladimiro Valerio (Naples 1987), pp.360–362 fig. 202; L’immagine delle città, op. cit., pp.160–161 nos. 54–55.

10. Silvano Ghironi, Padova: piante e vedute (1449–1865) (Padua 1985), no. 12a.

11. Laurentino García y García, Nova bibliotheca pompeiana (Rome 1998), p.591 no. 6453; Around the walls of Pompeii: the ancient city in its natural environment, edited by Annamaria Ciarallo and Ernesto De Carolis (Milan 1998), p.14 no. 9.

12. Paolo Arrigoni and Achille Bertarelli, Piante e vedute di Roma e del Lazio conservate nella Raccolta delle Stampe e dei Disegni, Castello Sforzesco (Milan 1939), p.28 no. 227 bis; also: L’immagine delle città, op. cit., nos. 91–93.

13. Roberto Barzanti, Iconografia di Siena: rappresentazione della città dal xiii al xix secolo (Siena 2006), pp.136–138 no. 97; also: Ettore Pellegrini, L’Iconografia di Siena nelle opere a stampa: Vedute generali della città dal xv al xix secolo (Siena 1986), pp.175–177 (misdated 1872).

14. Cesare Sinistri, Carlo Perini, and Gian Paolo Marchini, Verona nelle antiche stampe: catalogo delle stampe della città dalla fine del sec. xv alla fine del sec. xix (Verona 1978), no. 403; also: Voyageurs français à Vérone, edited by Annarosa Poli, Biblioteca del viaggio in Italia, Studi, 18 (Geneva 1984), p.294.

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