(DENON, Dominique Vivant). ~ Description des objets d’arts qui composent le cabinet de feu M. le Baron V. Denon. [1] Monuments antiques, historiques, modernes; ouvrages oreintaux, etc... [2] Paris: Hippolyte Tilliard [sold by Tilliard frères and Treuttel et Wurtz in Paris and Treuttel et Wurtz in London], 1826.
3 vols, 8vo (205 × 120 mm), pp. [4], v, [1], 307, [1]; [4], iv, 218; [4], vi, 216, complete with half-titles. The first two volumes mostly marked in early manuscript with prices and (usually) buyers’ names. Later nineteenth-century dark green half calf, spines gilt with the monograms of Frédéric Villot. Slightly rubbed, but excellent copies.
First editions of the complete sale catalogues of Denon’s celebrated collections, a marked-up set from the collection of Frédéric Villot (1809-1875), Louvre conservateur of pictures and an important collector in his own right.
Besides his erotic novella, Point de Lendemain, Denon (diplomat, artist and director of the Musée Napoleon at the Louvre) is primarily remembered for his role in Napoleon’s expeditions of 1798-9 and as author of Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte (1802). Among the most influential and important French collectors, he acquired obsessively but with discrimination, both for Napoleon and himself. His posthumous sales of 1826-7 included over 3000 lots of antiquities, pictures and prints, with eight important Egyptian papyri included in the first sale and his own drawings from the Egypt exhibition in another. The three volumes are very scarce complete and comprise: I. Monuments antiques, historiques, modernes; ouvrages orientale, etc. (ed. L.J.J. Dubois, 1390 lots); II. Tableaux dessins et miniatures (ed. A.N. Perignon, 977 lots); III. Estampes et ouvrages a figures (ed. Duchesne Aîné, 801 lots).