Voyage au Levant, c'est à dire dans les principaux endroits de l'Asie Mineure dans les Isles de Chio, de Rhodes, de Chypres &c. De même que dans les plus considerables villes d'Egypte, de Syrie, et de la Terre Sainte ... Traduit du Flamand.

Delft, Henri de Kroonevelt, 1700. Folio. Modern full tan morocco, spine with raised bands, lettered and ornamented in gilt in the compartments; pp. [xii], 408, [6, index]; emblematic additional engraved title, folding engraved map, 97 engraved plates including folding panoramas, 24 engraved illustrations in the text; a few foldiong panoramas with minor repairs to folds, occasional light spotting or browning, a few minor traces of worming in the margins, otherwise very good. First edition in French of this monumental classic of travel in the Levant with outstanding panoramic views. In his first expedition of 1674, the Dutch traveler Cornelius Le Bruyn remained in the Levant for seven years. On his return, he published his Voyages au Levant in Dutch in 1698, in French in 1700 (as here), and in English in 1702. The text consists of a mixture of first-hand observations and information drawn from other sources, but the impressive images are all by Le Bruyn himself. 'Bruyn, painter and traveller, left Holland in 1674 to travel through Europe and the Levant. He returned to Italy in 1685 and settled in Venice, returning to Holland in 1693. [He was best known as a landscape artist, and the] ... numerous plates ...[include] folding panoramas of Alexandria, Sattalia, Constantinople, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Chios, and double page plates of Constantinople and Scutari. Some of the plates consist of single views of Tyre, Aleppo, Palmyra and other subjects, others contain two or three or four views, costumes, plans [on a single sheet]' (Atabey). Constantinople is represented in three panoramas; one double-page, one over 95 cm long and the largest, loosely inserted, is over 190 cm long. See Atabey 159, 160 (other editions) and Blackmer 225 (1714 edition).