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4 volumes, folio (470 x 356 mm). 8 hand-colored engraved title-pages in French and English, 5 engraved dedications, 435 ENGRAVED PLATES, 181 of which are hand-colored, 48 are double-page or folding, 72 large and elaborately engraved vignettes and historiated initials, some in color, preface half-titles in volumes III and IV printed in red and black. (Several double-page plates reinserted on new stub, a few plates with pale dampstain in margins of vol. IV, very occasional light spotting to some margins, else bright.) Contemporary diced calf, marbled edges (re-backed to style preserving original lettering-pieces, some wear to extremities, evidence of bookplate removal on front pastedown in vol. I).

FIRST EDITION OF "ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ART PUBLICATIONS OF THE 18TH CENTURY". Sir William Hamilton, a British diplomat and art collector, came to Naples in 1764 after succeeding Sir James Gray as the British ambassador to the Kingdom. An avid antiquarian, Hamilton took a keen interest in classical antiquities and enlisted the amateur art dealer and authority on ancient art, Pierre-Francois Hugues d'Hancarville, to introduce him to the Porcinari family whose large collection of ancient classical vases would soon be purchased by the fledging antiquary and would become one of the world's finest collections of Greek and Roman antiquities. In 1772, Hamilton sold his entire collection to the British Museum but before the collection was shipped to London, Hamilton arranged for Hancarville to oversee the cataloguing and drawing of every object, a project which resulted in the most lavish books produced in the eighteenth century. This four-volume work would become "of great importance in the development of neo-classical designs for pottery and porcelain; it influenced Wedgwood especially" (Blackmer).

Although Blackmer states that the edition was of 500 copies, it appears that only 100 copies of the two later volumes were issued, and this, together with the long gap in publication, accounts for the relatively high number of incomplete sets (cf. I. Jenkins and K. Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes, p. 49).

CONTAINS ALL 520 ENGRAVINGS including 435 plates that corresponds with the Blackmer copy. Blackmer 845; Brunet I, 321 ("ouvrage précieux, exécuté avec beaucoup de luxe"); Cohen-de Ricci 474 ("edition splendide et de grand luxe").