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Les Arts au Moyen Age by Alexandre du SOMMERARD

Creator: Alexandre du SOMMERARD
Offered by: Shapero Gallery

Description
SOMMERARD, Alexandre du.

Les Arts au Moyen Age.
Stock Code 111417
1838-1846.

Current price$16,174.00
Sommerard's monumental publication on medieval arts: architecture, tapestry, goldsmithing, furniture, miniature, etc, illustrated with colour plates. Here in a fine crimson morocco binding.

'Like his family before him, Alexandre Du Sommerard (1779–1842) had a career in public service, first in the military, then in the civil service, then in the court itself. Passion for his native country of France was even more manifest in his art collecting and studies, which is where he directed most of his energies.

The first items he acquired were paintings by contemporary French painters, but, after 1825, he devoted himself to art from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, with particular attention to arts with French connections. In his actions and his collector's tastes, Sommerard was likely influenced by Alexandre Lenoir (1761–1839), who rescued medieval treasures and monuments from destruction during the French Revolution and who later set up the Musée des Monuments Français.

By 1832, Sommerard had accumulated such a large collection that he purchased the late fifteenth-century Hôtel des Abbés de Cluny to house it. In each room of the building, he arranged furniture, objects, and textiles according to their function or symbolic value in an attempt to replicate the interior spaces of the past.

In 1838, Alexandre Du Sommerard published the first volumes of a multivolume work, Les Arts du moyen-âge, which he intended as a history of French medieval art. His collection and study included early Christian and Byzantine art as the precursors to western medieval art. He felt that history should not rely solely on written sources and that historians and the public needed to comprehend the history of art as well.' (Dumbarton Oaks online).

First edition, large folio (55.5 x 27 cm), plate volumes only, one atlas and 9 series of plates bound in 4 volumes, 9 title pages for 1st to 9th series coloured blue and gilt, hand coloured general title, 507 lithograph plates including 368 chromolithographed plates (many with additional hand colour), finely bound in contemporary crimson morocco gilt, covers with broad gilt borders, spines in seven compartments, green morocco labels to second and third, others richly gilt, raised bands, all edges gilt, by John Wright of London, light fade to spines, a little minor foxing, a fine set.

More Information

Documentation:	Documented elsewhere (similar item)
Period:	19th Century
Condition:	Good.
Creation Date:	1838-1846
Styles / Movements:	Traditional
Dealer Reference #:	111417
Incollect Reference #:	703854

Dimensions

W.	10.63 in;	H.	21.85 in;
W.	27 cm;	H.	55.5 cm;

Message from Seller:

Based in the heart of Mayfair in London, we specialise in prints and original works on paper across a broad range of subjects, from antique prints to modern pochoir plates, as well as photographs from vintage photography to modern art photography.