![GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques (1717-1786). Myologie complette en couleur et grandeur naturelle, composée de l'essai et de la suite de l'essai d'anatomie, en tableaux imprimés. Paris: Gautier, Quillau father and son, and Lamesle, 1746 [-1748].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2011/CKS/2011_CKS_08002_0068_001(gautier_dagoty_jacques_myologie_complette_en_couleur_et_grandeur_natur021623).jpg?w=1)
![GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques (1717-1786). Myologie complette en couleur et grandeur naturelle, composée de l'essai et de la suite de l'essai d'anatomie, en tableaux imprimés. Paris: Gautier, Quillau father and son, and Lamesle, 1746 [-1748].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2011/CKS/2011_CKS_08002_0068_000(gautier_dagoty_jacques_myologie_complette_en_couleur_et_grandeur_natur070933).jpg?w=1)
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Lots 68-70
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques (1717-1786). Myologie complette en couleur et grandeur naturelle, composée de l'essai et de la suite de l'essai d'anatomie, en tableaux imprimés. Paris: Gautier, Quillau father and son, and Lamesle, 1746 [-1748].
Details
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques (1717-1786). Myologie complette en couleur et grandeur naturelle, composée de l'essai et de la suite de l'essai d'anatomie, en tableaux imprimés. Paris: Gautier, Quillau father and son, and Lamesle, 1746 [-1748].
2 parts in one volume, 2° (542 x 390mm). Title printed in red and black, 20 life-size colour-printed mezzotints, the larger plates folded on stubs and with the corresponding text leaf joined. (Text leaf for plate 20 with repaired tears, some browning, occasional spotting in text leaves.) Contemporary boards (re-backed and re-cornered in 20th-century sheep, boards worn). Provenance: G.B. (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of this dramatic and radically original landmark of medical illustration. The life-size plates were engraved and printed in four colours in a process invented by Leblon and elaborated by Gautier, who had a 30-year privilege to use the process in France. Gautier intended the varnished versions of his images, which he offered at an additional charge, to resemble oil paintings -- an artistic quality not attempted previously in anatomical illustration. The varnish, however, ages poorly, and those deluxe copies are now often in poor condition. Unvarnished plates in bright state, as here, are now more desirable. Gautier's first project was the production of eight prints of the face, neck, head, tongue and larynx, which he issued in 1745, followed one year later by a second group of twelve mostly larger prints showing muscles of the pharynx, torso, arms and legs. A year later Gautier issued the two works together under the general title Myologie Complette. Gautier prepared the plates for all these images from cadavers dissected by Joseph Guichard Duverney, lecturer in anatomy at the Jardin du Roi. Choulant-Frank, pp. 270-74; Franklin, Early Colour Printing: 1977, 43-44; Wellcome III, p. 97.
2 parts in one volume, 2° (542 x 390mm). Title printed in red and black, 20 life-size colour-printed mezzotints, the larger plates folded on stubs and with the corresponding text leaf joined. (Text leaf for plate 20 with repaired tears, some browning, occasional spotting in text leaves.) Contemporary boards (re-backed and re-cornered in 20th-century sheep, boards worn). Provenance: G.B. (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of this dramatic and radically original landmark of medical illustration. The life-size plates were engraved and printed in four colours in a process invented by Leblon and elaborated by Gautier, who had a 30-year privilege to use the process in France. Gautier intended the varnished versions of his images, which he offered at an additional charge, to resemble oil paintings -- an artistic quality not attempted previously in anatomical illustration. The varnish, however, ages poorly, and those deluxe copies are now often in poor condition. Unvarnished plates in bright state, as here, are now more desirable. Gautier's first project was the production of eight prints of the face, neck, head, tongue and larynx, which he issued in 1745, followed one year later by a second group of twelve mostly larger prints showing muscles of the pharynx, torso, arms and legs. A year later Gautier issued the two works together under the general title Myologie Complette. Gautier prepared the plates for all these images from cadavers dissected by Joseph Guichard Duverney, lecturer in anatomy at the Jardin du Roi. Choulant-Frank, pp. 270-74; Franklin, Early Colour Printing: 1977, 43-44; Wellcome III, p. 97.
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