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CARBURI, Marin (d. 1782). Monument élevé a la gloire de Pierre Le Grand. Paris: Nyon and Stoupe, 1777.
2° (423 x 280mm).12 folding engraved plates, most double-page, by Sellier and d'Elvaux after Blarenberg. (Final plate with some light ink spotting, occasional variable light browning and offsetting.) Contemporary mottled calf, gilt spine (joints sometime clumsily repaired, extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: Henry Tronchin (armorial bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of this account of this remarkable feat of engineering. Charged with creating a monument to Peter the Great, the French architect Falconet decided that the traditional pedestals for equestrian statues would be too mundane for this project and decided that only a massive rock would be suitable. After a great deal of searching for a suitable stone a peasant informed the committee set up for the purpose that he had found an enormous rock in a marsh near the Gulf of Finland, measuring forty by twenty-seven by twenty-one feet. After most engineers had declared its removal impossible Catherine the Great turned to Carburi who in about ten weeks had the rock placed in the correct position. The author was a Greek who, in his youth, had committed some crime against his family, had banished himself from his native island of Cephalonia and had come to Russia where he found favour with Catherine II. Berlin Kat 1794.
2° (423 x 280mm).12 folding engraved plates, most double-page, by Sellier and d'Elvaux after Blarenberg. (Final plate with some light ink spotting, occasional variable light browning and offsetting.) Contemporary mottled calf, gilt spine (joints sometime clumsily repaired, extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: Henry Tronchin (armorial bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of this account of this remarkable feat of engineering. Charged with creating a monument to Peter the Great, the French architect Falconet decided that the traditional pedestals for equestrian statues would be too mundane for this project and decided that only a massive rock would be suitable. After a great deal of searching for a suitable stone a peasant informed the committee set up for the purpose that he had found an enormous rock in a marsh near the Gulf of Finland, measuring forty by twenty-seven by twenty-one feet. After most engineers had declared its removal impossible Catherine the Great turned to Carburi who in about ten weeks had the rock placed in the correct position. The author was a Greek who, in his youth, had committed some crime against his family, had banished himself from his native island of Cephalonia and had come to Russia where he found favour with Catherine II. Berlin Kat 1794.
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