Jeaurat - Traité de Perspective - 1750

127 ENGRAVED TABLES - THE ART OF SPACE: THE PERSPECTIVE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND OPTICAL ILLUSION
The Traité de perspective by Edme-Sébastien Jeaurat stands out first and foremost as a visually powerful work: a corpus of no less than 110 large engraved plates (with further duplicate numbers up to 127 figures in total) that transform the treatise into a true optical machine. The images do not accompany the text; they replace it and surpass it, building a didactic space where geometry becomes tangible vision. Published in Paris in 1750, in the heart of technical Enlightenment, the volume represents one of the most ambitious attempts to render perspective not only understandable but operable, through a broad, clear, and progressive iconographic apparatus designed to guide the artist’s eye as a scientific instrument.
MARKET VALUE
The market for this first edition remains stable but selective, with complete sets of the plates generally valued between 800 and 1,000 euros, with higher prices for fresh copies, well bound, and with a sharp and complete iconographic apparatus.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Binding in carded boards covered with marbled paper with a leather patch on the spine; wear to the binding. Illustrated edition with vignettes and ornamented finials, but above all with an imposing iconographic apparatus consisting of 110 large plates engraved in the text (numbered 1-110 with 17 numbers duplicated, for a total of 127 figures). The plates, of generous size and extraordinary graphic clarity, constitute the operational heart of the volume. A copy coming from the library of Juan Manuel Acevedo, with heraldic ex-libris. In old books, with a centuries-old history, a few imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description. Pp. 8nn; 232; 10nn.

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Traité de perspective à l'usage des artistes.
Paris, Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1750.
Jeaurat, Edme-Sébastien.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
The work situates itself at a crucial moment in European visual culture, when perspective becomes a universal language between art, science, and technique. Jeaurat reframes the French tradition of Abraham Bosse and Sébastien Le Clerc, elevating it to a higher level of systematicity, but it is especially in the use of the plates that the treatise achieves its most radical originality. The engravings are not ancillary: they constitute a progressive visual learning system, where each figure builds the next. The depiction of shadows, reflections, and luminous phenomena – particularly on water – introduces a dynamic and almost experimental dimension of space. The book thus becomes a cognitive device, a portable laboratory in which the artist learns to see through geometry. It is one of the high points of the Enlightenment transformation of perspective into a technology of vision.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Edme-Sébastien Jeaurat (1724–1803) was a mathematician, astronomer, and a member of the Académie royale des sciences. Woven into the great French scientific tradition, he devoted himself to the study of perspective and applied optics, contributing to codifying rigorous methods for artistic training. His work fully reflects the Enlightenment ideal of clarity, transmission, and usefulness of knowledge.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The 1750 edition represents the work’s first publication, printed by Charles-Antoine Jombert, a publisher specializing in high-level technical and artistic works. The presence of such a vast apparatus of engraved plates implies a substantial publishing investment, indicative of a professional and educated audience. The volume circulated widely within academic circles and among artists, architects, and engineers, becoming a reference tool in the teaching of perspective.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
ICCU/OPAC SBN: IT\ICCU\TO0E\036251 (collation to be verified on individual copies)
BnF Catalogue général: Jeaurat, Traité de perspective, Paris, 1750
WorldCat: OCLC 45721536
Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte, n. 870
Millard, French Books on Art and Architecture, pp. 112-115
Pevsner, Academies of Art, pp. 145-152
Vagnetti, De naturali et artificiali perspectiva, introduction