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Jacques BARRABAND & L. BOUQUET

DESCRIPTION DE L'EGYPTE. Zoologie. Oiseaux. (Histoire Naturelle, planche 6)

Imprimerie Impériale, Paris 1809-1829, 53,5x70cm (42x58cm hors marges), une feuille.

Executed between 1802 and 1830, the plate was printed in 1,000 copies, sent to institutions. Vergé paper with ‘Egypte ancienne et moderne’ watermark visible when held to the light.

A plate from the Oiseaux [Birds] series, the study for which was written by Jules-César Savigny (1777-1851), a zoologist who took part in the Egyptian campaign as a specialist on invertebrates. Heightened in colors by a contemporary hand. Only a few rare examples of the plates of birds were thus colored at the time, most remaining black and white.

Three miniscule wormholes to margin not affecting engraving, a very small repaired tear at the level of the lower pressure mark (10 cm), otherwise in an excellent state of preservation.

The monumental first edition of the Description de l'Egypte in 13 volumes had 892 plates, of which 72 were colored; 9 volumes were devoted to Antiquities. The other volumes were on Natural History and Modern Egypt; Napoleon Bonaparte had taken with him a scientific council from all the various disciplines so good that the description they produced was sold as “the richest museum in the universe.” The work was written in part by Baron Dominique Vivant-Denon, before his appointment as the Director General of the Musée Napoléon in the Louvre. More than 80 artists and 400 engravers were engaged for this colossal project.
The exceptionally large size of the plates meant that a special press had to be made for them, as well as a special furniture in which to keep them! 

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