Lot Essay
The present drawing is a study for plate 56 in volume IV of Le Voyage pittoresque, as recorded above, commissioned by the Abbé Richard de Saint-Non from Dominique Vivant-Denon. The print is inscribed 'Seconde Vue du Port et de la Ville de Palerme'.
The origin of the Voyage pittoresque dates from 1777 with the publication of the first volume of a work on Switzerland and Italy by the Valet de chambre du Roi Jean-Benjamin Delaborde. The book was unfortunately unsuccessful and Delaborde asked the Abbé de Saint-Non to help him continue with the later volumes. Saint-Non in turn asked the young Vivant-Denon to undertake the trip.
Although Saint-Non used some of the drawings he owned by Robert and Fragonard in the publication, he asked Châtelet and Desprez, then at the Académie de France in Rome, to travel with Vivant-Denon.
Desprez arived in Naples in late 1777 and had already left for Sicily when the Surintendant des Bâtiments d'Angevillier wrote to him on the 10 May 1778 to grant him permission to work on the project. Desprez's contribution in the first volume was relatively small, but in the later volumes published in 1782 and 1783 his contribution amounted respectively to twenty two drawings for the second volume and forty seven for the last two volumes, N.G. Wollin, Desprez en Italie, Malmö, 1935, pp. 26-33.
On 16 January 1779 Desprez returned to Rome. Vien, then Directeur of the Académie de France, wrote to d'Angevillier 'Le Sr Després, pensionnaire, estant totalement occupé depuis son retour de Sicile à terminer les dessins des veues qui devoient servir à l'ouvrage de M. Laborde, qu'il n'avoit qu'esquissé sur le lieu', A. de Montaiglon and j. Guiffrey, Correspondence des Directeurs de l'Académie de France à Rome, Paris, 1904, XIII, p. 365, op. cit., 1904, p. 416. Indeed a sketch for the present drawing is in the Stevens Collection, Dover.
The origin of the Voyage pittoresque dates from 1777 with the publication of the first volume of a work on Switzerland and Italy by the Valet de chambre du Roi Jean-Benjamin Delaborde. The book was unfortunately unsuccessful and Delaborde asked the Abbé de Saint-Non to help him continue with the later volumes. Saint-Non in turn asked the young Vivant-Denon to undertake the trip.
Although Saint-Non used some of the drawings he owned by Robert and Fragonard in the publication, he asked Châtelet and Desprez, then at the Académie de France in Rome, to travel with Vivant-Denon.
Desprez arived in Naples in late 1777 and had already left for Sicily when the Surintendant des Bâtiments d'Angevillier wrote to him on the 10 May 1778 to grant him permission to work on the project. Desprez's contribution in the first volume was relatively small, but in the later volumes published in 1782 and 1783 his contribution amounted respectively to twenty two drawings for the second volume and forty seven for the last two volumes, N.G. Wollin, Desprez en Italie, Malmö, 1935, pp. 26-33.
On 16 January 1779 Desprez returned to Rome. Vien, then Directeur of the Académie de France, wrote to d'Angevillier 'Le Sr Després, pensionnaire, estant totalement occupé depuis son retour de Sicile à terminer les dessins des veues qui devoient servir à l'ouvrage de M. Laborde, qu'il n'avoit qu'esquissé sur le lieu', A. de Montaiglon and j. Guiffrey, Correspondence des Directeurs de l'Académie de France à Rome, Paris, 1904, XIII, p. 365, op. cit., 1904, p. 416. Indeed a sketch for the present drawing is in the Stevens Collection, Dover.