CHOISEUL-GOUFFIER (Marie Gabriel, Comte de).
Voyage Pittoresque De la Grèce.
A particularly fine copy of this important work. The third issue can be identified, according to Leonora Navari, by the final line of the preliminiary discourse which ends: “O *utinam…”* By contrast the first two issues finish with the words: “exoriare aliquis…”
The author made his first visit to Greece in 1776, cruising through the islands and along the coastline of Asia Minor, before coasting around the Morea and travelling from Athens to Salonika. In 1784 he was appointed ambassador to the Ottoman court, a post he held until the French Revolution, after which, it not being safe for him to return to France, he spent the next ten years in Russia, before returning home in 1802. The second volume was much delayed, only the first part appearing before the author’s death in 1817, the final section not being completed until 1822.
The most important work on Greece and Turkey of the period, the book is beautifully printed on thick paper with fine engraved vignettes and, given that it took forty years to produce, it exhibits a remarkable typographical uniformity.
Blackmer, 342.
