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GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques (1717-1785). Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain. Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.
Broadsheets (718 x 504 mm). Title printed in red and black, 18 leaves of text. 20 color mezzotints (some marginal tears repaired, some areas of color skillfully retouched). (First leaf of the table with lower margin renewed, text leaves rebound out of sequence, small marginal worm track repaired.) 20th-century brown half morocco, front cover with gilt-lettered title label (lightly rubbed). Provenance: Henri Duhamel du Monceau (1700-ca 1781), French botanist and author (modern label on upper cover).
FIRST EDITION. "This rare series of plates is perhaps the most astonishing of any Gautier made--the maturity of his art and colouring, strangely surrealist, showing his capacity for grandeur and gentleness equally. The twenty plates make up nine of the almost full-length figures, men and women; skeletal, back, front, pregnant. The final plate of a skeletal man is an extraordinary composition in itself-- bones of his legs against the darkest green, his feet resting upon inches of red base as a pedestal... The two single plates making up this group earn their place in the collection, quiet and imaginative compositions. One shows dissection of a new-born child, with placenta and umbilical cord and the womb above; the other has a typical Gautier notion of a nude with normal body and healthy though contemplative face, squatting with legs apart and knees pulled up to show a dissected womb with foetus in place. This is a stunning example of every aspect of Jacques-Fabien--the bravery of mezzotint and colour-print, its erotic and surrealist overtone" (Franklin, Early Colour Printing, pp. 46-47). VERY RARE: according to American Book Prices Current, only an incomplete copy lacking text and one plate has appeared at auction in at least thirty years, sold Sotheby's London, 19 July 1984, lot 256. Choulant-Frank pp. 271-72; Singer 136-155.
Broadsheets (718 x 504 mm). Title printed in red and black, 18 leaves of text. 20 color mezzotints (some marginal tears repaired, some areas of color skillfully retouched). (First leaf of the table with lower margin renewed, text leaves rebound out of sequence, small marginal worm track repaired.) 20th-century brown half morocco, front cover with gilt-lettered title label (lightly rubbed). Provenance: Henri Duhamel du Monceau (1700-ca 1781), French botanist and author (modern label on upper cover).
FIRST EDITION. "This rare series of plates is perhaps the most astonishing of any Gautier made--the maturity of his art and colouring, strangely surrealist, showing his capacity for grandeur and gentleness equally. The twenty plates make up nine of the almost full-length figures, men and women; skeletal, back, front, pregnant. The final plate of a skeletal man is an extraordinary composition in itself-- bones of his legs against the darkest green, his feet resting upon inches of red base as a pedestal... The two single plates making up this group earn their place in the collection, quiet and imaginative compositions. One shows dissection of a new-born child, with placenta and umbilical cord and the womb above; the other has a typical Gautier notion of a nude with normal body and healthy though contemplative face, squatting with legs apart and knees pulled up to show a dissected womb with foetus in place. This is a stunning example of every aspect of Jacques-Fabien--the bravery of mezzotint and colour-print, its erotic and surrealist overtone" (Franklin, Early Colour Printing, pp. 46-47). VERY RARE: according to American Book Prices Current, only an incomplete copy lacking text and one plate has appeared at auction in at least thirty years, sold Sotheby's London, 19 July 1984, lot 256. Choulant-Frank pp. 271-72; Singer 136-155.