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 prints
Paris, at François Muguet, First Printer to the King, 1699.

In-12 (approximately 160 × 100 mm when bound).
Pp. (20), 540, (2).
Missing the engraved frontispiece (engraved by Simonneau after a drawing by Antoine Coypel).

Contemporary full black morocco binding, back with raised bands and gilded ornaments and fillets, worn, boards and edges a little scuffed, as befits a specimen of over three centuries. Interior overall fresh, with the typical age stains and a few damp marks, but paper firm and text clearly legible.

The work opens with the famous Treatise on the Perfect Painter, a true 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 on the usefulness of prints.

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 make the work not a mere repertory, but a tool for aesthetic judgment.

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

The work achieved enormous success and was reprinted several times (the second edition of 1715 is already 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 prejudice the rarity and interest of the volume, which remains a fundamental classic of European art literature.

A genuine specimen of the rarissima original edition, of great interest to collectors of art and old books on the subject.