Bidspirit auction | DU SOMMERARD (Alexandre). LES ARTS

DU SOMMERARD (Alexandre). LES ARTS au Moyen Âge. Paris. 1838-1846. - DU SOMMERARD (Alexandre) LES ARTS au Moyen Âge . En ce qui concerne principalement le Palais romain de Paris, l'Hôtel de Cluny, issu de ses ruines, et les objets d'art de la collection classée dans cet hôtel. Paris: [Imprimé par Bancquet], 1838-1846. 3 v.: 107 gravs.; 402 gravs. (2 v.): il.; 550 mm. One of the most monumental nineteenth-century publications on European medieval art, published in installments between 1838 and 1846. Alexandre Du Sommerard (Bar-sur-Aube, 1779 - Paris, 1842) was the great pioneer of the revaluation of medieval heritage in France: an indefatigable collector, he housed his collection in the Hôtel de Cluny – the only surviving medieval palace in Paris from the late fifteenth century – where he organized the objects according to their function and symbolic value, anticipating the principles of modern museography. Upon his death, the French State acquired the collection and the building, which became the Musée de Cluny (now the Musée National du Moyen Âge), with his son Edmond Du Sommerard (1817-1885) being appointed its first curator and completing volume V of the work. The Arts in the Middle Ages constitutes the intellectual summary of a life devoted to the study of medieval arts: the result of travels, archival studies, and decades of direct observation, the work mobilized approximately sixty artists for the execution of the roughly 510 lithographic plates, in black and white and sepia, distributed across one volume of Atlas and two volumes of Album. The engravings are organized into 10 series and 9 thematic classes: religious monuments; civil monuments; civil and religious furniture; sculpture; painting; miniatures, manuscripts, and drawings; tapestries; enamels and gold altars; weapons, armor, and ironwork. The work documents pieces from the main medieval collections and monuments of France and Europe, in an unprecedented encyclopedic effort in the field of medieval archaeology. Among the plate designers are Victor Petit, Émile Sagot, and Théophile Fragonard; among the lithographic printers, Lith. by A. Godard, Lemercier Bernard et Cie and Lith. by Thierry Frères. Highly sought after. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate