R. de Piles
 - Abrégé de la Vie des Peintres - 1699

First edition.

Roger de Piles
Abridgement of the lives of painters, with reflections on their works, and a Treatise on the perfect painter, on the knowledge of designs, and on the usefulness of engravings
Paris, At François Muguet, first Printer to the King, 1699.

In-12 (approximately 160 × 100 mm when bound).
Pp. (20), 540, (2). The calcographic frontispiece is missing (engraved by Simonneau from a design by Antoine Coypel).

Contemporary binding in full mottled calf, spine with raised bands and gilt ornaments and fillets, loosening, boards and edges a bit worn, as befits a copy over three centuries old. Interior overall fresh, with the typical time stains and a few halos, but paper solid and text clearly legible.

The work opens with the famous Treatise on the perfect painter, a veritable theoretical manifesto in which de Piles defines the essential qualities of the ideal painter (genius, study of nature, drawing, color, composition, expression, etc.) and provides practical precepts on the knowledge of drawings and the usefulness of engravings.

Follow the Biographical Abridgement divided by schools:
• Origins of painting and Greek painters
• Romans and Florentines (Cimabue, Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, etc.)
• Venetians (Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, …)
• Lombards (Correggio, Carracci, Guido Reni, …)
• Germans and Flemish (Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, …)
• French (Poussin, Le Brun, etc.)

Each life is accompanied by acute critical reflections on the works, which makes the work not a mere repertory, but a tool of aesthetic judgment.

Roger de Piles (1635–1709), diplomat, collector and theoretician, is one of the central figures of the French art debate at the end of the 17th century. With this volume – published anonymously – he systematizes for the first time in France the lives of painters by national schools and introduces a modern critical approach, privileging color over drawing and providing concrete criteria for appreciating works.

The work enjoyed enormous success and was reissued several times (the second edition of 1715 is revised and enlarged), but the first edition of 1699 remains very rare on the market, especially in decent condition. Complete copies of the frontispiece are even more sought after; the absence of this plate, while noticeable, does not compromise the rarity and interest of the volume, which remains a fundamental classic of European art literature.

A genuine copy of the extremely rare original edition, of great interest to collectors of art and of ancient books on the subject.