L' Antiquité Expliquée, et Représentée en Figures. by MONTFAUCON, (Dom Bernard de)

Paris: Florentin Delaulne, Hilaire Foucault, Michel Clousier, Jean-Geoffrey Nyon, Etienne Ganeay, Nicolas Gosselin et Pierre-François Giffart, 1719-1757.. 15 volumes. Large folio (43 x 28 cm), comprising 5 vols bound in 10, as usual, plus 5 supplementary volumes. Half title and title printed in red to each volume, continuous pagination through the two parts. Folio. Text in parallel French and Latin. Contemporary mottled calf, spines with raised bands, gilt decorated compartments, red and brown labels, marbled end-papers, all edges gilt. Near uniform bindings but as typically with slight variant tooling to the spines of Supplement due to later publication date. Complete as listed in Brunet* with 1396 plates (on 1395 sheets) of which 242 are double page. Signs of earlier very professional refurbishment, small areas of gilding renewed, corners repaired etc. Endpapers browned, occasional leaves lightly tanned in accordance with varied paper stock, generally very clean and fresh contents in a handsome binding in excellent condition.. FIRST EDITION of the ten volumes of the main body of the work (1719, Second Edition published 1722), Second Edition of the Supplement (1757) which was first issued in 1724. "This work served as a fundamental source work of classical motifs for painters, sculptors and architects...Robert Adam derived many of his decorative repertoire from it..." (Blackmer Sale Catalogue, 226). * Vol. 1. 230 plates, numbered 1-224 plus the portrait of the Comte d'Éstrées at the front, plus 4 duplicate numbers and the unnumbered plate of Antiope at the very end, of which 17 are double page Vol. 2. 195 plates, numbered 1-194 plus one extra unnumbered of Nehalenia, of which 25 double page (including one folding). Vol. 3. 199 plates, numbered 1-197 plus 2 duplicate numbers, of which 29 double page. Vol. 4. 150 plates, numbered 1-145 (but no number 144 as usual) plus 4 duplicate numbers and 2 unnumbered plates at the end, of which 54 are double-page. Vol. 5. 204 plates, numbered 1-204, of which 12 double-page. Sup. 1.103 plates, numbered 1-88 plus 15 duplicate numbers, of which 17 double-page. Sup. 2. 77 plates, numbered 1- 61 (no number 14 as usual) plus 17 duplicate, triplicate & quadruplicate numbers, of which 19 are double-page (including 2 folding). Sup. 3. 95 plates, numbered 1-84 plus 11 duplicate and triplicate numbers, of which 23 are double page. Sup. 4. 67 plates, numbered 1-60 plus 7 duplicate numbers, of which 27 double page. Sup. 5. 76 plates, numbered 1-73 plus 3 duplicate numbers (on 75 sheets , numbers 42 & 43 being on the same sheet), of which 19 double-page. Brunet notes that the frontispiece to volume one, not present here, is not normally found in the first edition. "[Montfaucon's] Antiquité surveyed in fifteen volumes the social and artistic aspects of the ancient civilizations; and the unfinished Monuments de la Monarchie Française tried to do the same for early French history. These works can well be called foundation stones of scientific archaeology" (Printing and the Mind of Man 175). (Cicognara 2493; Lipperheide 104; Brunet, 3, 1861-2).