Nouvelle description de la ville de Paris et de tout ce qu’elle contient de plus remarquable
The description of Paris by Brice illustrated with 41 plates, bound in red morocco with the coat of arms of the Duchess of Orléans, one of the rarest female provenances of the 18th century.
4 volumes 12mo, red morocco, triple gilt fillet bordering the covers, coat of arms in the center, spine with raised bands and gilt decoration, decorated edges, gilt edges. Contemporary binding.
165 x 91 mm.
Brice, Germain. New Description of the City of Paris and All Its Most Remarkable Features. Eighth edition, revised & newly augmented. Paris, Fournier, 1725.
Edition partly original, illustrated with 41 plates including a map.
“For the first time, a work set out to describe to the foreign traveler and the enthusiast the city of Paris in its topographical reality” (Jean-Pierre Babelon).
In one of his prefaces, Brice mentioned: “No one could deny that the city of Paris currently contains an infinity of surprising and truly admirable diversities, and that it holds such great advantages over all the most famous cities that are known, that it is not surprising to see a continual influx of foreigners coming from all parts of Europe, to see for themselves. This edition contains a quantity of novelties of various kinds, sought after with great care; such as buildings recently constructed, libraries more numerous than in any other city in Europe, cabinets of various rarities, and a thousand other unique things that have appeared in these last years…”
Germain Brice (1653–1727) follows a long line of Parisian historians begun by Gilles Corrozet and Father Jacques du Breul. Nevertheless, he sets himself apart from his predecessors by offering a modern vision of the city in a work presented as a practical guide for travelers, giving them the opportunity to discover the architectural and artistic riches of the capital… This innovative approach ensured him great success and made this book the most popular guide to Paris in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The continuing success of this book led booksellers to keep publishing new editions, calling on other historians to update it.
As an inquisitive explorer of all Paris’s architectural treasures and a keen connoisseur of the era's private collections, Germain Brice describes the beauties of the capital. The discovery route he offers begins at the Louvre, continues along the right bank from west to east, then along the left bank from east to west, before reaching the Île de la Cité, Notre-Dame, the Hôtel-Dieu, the Palace and the bridges. The last edition moved away from its original purpose as a Paris guide to become a work intended for art enthusiasts, detailing the capital’s artistic treasures.
From the fifth edition (1706) onwards, engraved illustrations appeared. These increased with each new publication, just as the pagination grew from 565 pages in the original edition to over 2000 in 1752 for the final edition. The best draughtsmen and engravers of the time—Jean Chaufourier, Antoine Hérisset, Ferdinand Delamonce, Claude Lucas, Gérard Jean-Baptiste Scotin, Jean-Baptiste Scotin, Antoine Aveline—were engaged to produce these illustrations. The last edition (1752) includes forty-one figures, including a folding map of Paris engraved for the occasion.
Precious copy bound in red morocco with the coat of arms of the Duchess of Orléans.
Auguste-Marie-Jeanne of Baden, daughter of Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, commander-in-chief of the Imperial armies, and of Françoise-Sibylle of Saxe-Lauenburg, was born 10 November 1704. In 1724 she married Louis I, Duke of Orléans, son of the Regent, who died in 1752. She died following the birth of her second child, on 8 August 1726, at the Palais Royal in Paris.
This provenance is among the rarest in women’s book collecting of the 18th century, Marie-Jeanne of Baden having died at the age of 23.
