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THE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF LEGRAND'S UNFINISHED TREATISE ON THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF GREECE. Folio (18 1/2" x 12", 472mm x 305mm). [Full collation available.] With illustrations for 93 plates on 86 mounted pieces of tissue, with text and some extensions of the plate on the leaf itself. Tape-bound in five sections (quires 1-8, 9-16, 17, 18, 19-22), without wrappers. Watermarked "BROOKSBANK", countermarked with a bunch of grapes. Disbound (though likely never bound). Small splits or chips at the edges (1/2"-square loss to the initial blank), with some occasional soiling at exposed edges. A little foxing and toning at the plates, offsetting to the final leaf of the text (91). Tissue tanned. Some light marginal graphite printer's marks throughout. With all deckles preserved. Written in a fine cursive of a single hand (viz. Legrand's), including the plates' captions. Plates drawn in pen-and-ink, several with a pink wash, a few with ink wash as well. Jacques-Guillaume Legrand (1753-1807 ) was France's great historian-architect of the period surrounding the Revolution. With his partner Jacques Molinos, he traveled in Italy -- notably Paestum -- to study Greek architecture autoptically and through careful measurement. Though his plan was to travel to Magna Graecia (the southern part of Italy settled by the Greeks from the VIIIc BC), he was recalled to France and was set eventually to restore the architectural damage done to Paris and its environs throughout the Revolution. His practice largely does not survive, but his commissions were substantial: the dome of the Halle aux blés (grain market, now the site of La Bourse) was one of the most influential in British and American architecture, groundbreaking for its construction and proportion. His final commission was the restoration of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, the burial site of France's kings. So great was his dedication to the task that in order better to supervise the work he moved to the abbey-church, whose environment ultimately led to his death. Doubtless Legrand's most ambitious publishing product was the Galerie antique, a vast treatise on the architecture and architectural sculpture of the ancient world. The series -- though not as such -- had begun in 1798 as a collaboration with Philibert Boutrois. Its antecedents were, principally, the 1762(-1816) Antiquities of Athens of Stuart and Revett and Julien-David Le Roy's 1758 Ruines des plus Beaux Monuments de la Grèce. Legrand aimed to expand access to the honest and accurate analysis of Greek architectural principles, keeping students and practitioners away from "les imitations que les Romains en ont faites" (p. 4 printed, 2sub2r MS) -- especially in the case of Doric and Ionic structures. The 1808 Monumens de la Grèce ou Collection des chefs-d'oeuvre d'architecture (Paris & Strasbourg: Treuttel & Würtz), intended as a first instalment but the only one to be published, set about to disseminate the honest analysis of Greek architecture at a period in French history and architectural history that grasped for the ideals of Athens. On a number of bases, it is clear that the present work is preparatory for rather than derivative of the printed volume. Two marginal comments (in the same hand) are signed by a monogram that must be Legrand's: 2sub2v, specifying that the chronological table be an "extrait, relativement au monumens [monogram]"; and 14sub2v (against pl. 29), instructing that the reader (or, perhaps, the engraver) "voyez mon vignole de detournelles [monogram]", which must mean his personal copy. The published work is recorded at auction only once. Printer's copy is rare in any period, largely because it was often disbound and disseminated (cast off) to typesetters. Ordinarily it allows for glimpses into small changes made at the press -- punctuation, spelling, paragraph breaks and so forth -- but in the present case the gap between the manuscript and the printed book is substantial.
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