Revolutionary Proportions
AUDRAN, Girard. Les proportions du corps humain, mesurées par les plus belles figures de l’antiquité. Paris: [Jacques-François] Chéreau. 1785.
Folio. Contemporary mottled calf, borders roll-tooled in gilt, upper board lettered ‘donne. a l’ecole centrale du dept. de la Seine inferieure. L’an 6. de la republique francoise’, gilt red morocco lettering-piece, flat spine decorated in gilt, marbled endpapers, green silk place-marker; pp. [viii], 30 numbered copper-engraved plates; plate 29 signed ‘R. Vrbin. in.’ / ‘G. Au. Sculp. cum. privil.’, and plate 30 signed ‘R.V. In.’ and ‘G. Au.s. C.P.R.’, woodcut vignette to title; upper joint splitting but holding, a few chips to spine ends and upper joint, corners worn, small closed marginal paperflaw to title, small marginal loss to lower corner of plate 24, a few small marks; a very good copy.
Rare second French edition – reusing the plates of the self-published editio princeps of 1683 – of this study of human anatomy based on Greek, Roman, and Egyptian statues by the graveur du roi Gérard Audran (1640–1703), our copy in a binding dated ‘an VI’ of the French republican calendar (i.e. 1797–98) for the newly es-tablished, short-lived École Centrale du Département de la Seine-Inférieure.
Central schools were established in 1795 under the First Republic – and abolished in 1802 – as secular replacements for the arts faculties of the ancien régime; in early 1796, the Collège National de Rouen (established in 1592 by the Jesuits and renamed the Collège Royal from the 1762 expulsion of the Jesuits until 1791) reopened its doors as the École Centrale du Département de la Seine-Inférieure. The project was short-lived, however: the classrooms suffered from a lack of heating, and teachers were on multiple occasions paid six months late (their salaries also included rations of bread).
Despite attempts by the Republican government – influenced by Condorcet – to promote the sciences and to favour the study of commercially useful modern languages over Latin and Greek, the school at Rouen had no students of German, Spanish, or Italian. The school was reestablished as the Lycée Impérial in 1803 (now Lycée Pierre Corneille). Audran’s dedication notes the book’s particular importance as a tool for draughtsmen. By 1800, the École Centrale had some one hundred and fifty students of drawing – a third of the student body – and this volume was likely used in teaching.
The present work uses Greek and Roman statues as models, breaking down the propor-tions of each part of the body and showing each figure from multiple angles. All the statues depicted were held in Rome in the seventeenth century, and Audran likely made his pre-paratory drawings during his sojourn in the city from 1667 to 1670; he is thought to have trained with Carlo Maratta and resided in Rome until he was recalled by Jean-Baptiste Col-bert. Upon his return Audran was made a member of the council of the Académie Royale and was appointed graveur du roi. Among Audran’s subjects are Laocoön and His Sons (Laocoön illustrated on plates 1–4 and his sons on plates 24–25); the Farnese Hercules (held at the Palazzo Farnese until 1787), the Ludovisi Gaul, the Belvedere Antinous, the Dying Gaul, and the oft-copied Venus de’Medici. He also illustrates details of individual facial features of the Apollo Belve-dere and has two plates after Raphael, the first respectively showing details from the Vision of the Cross and the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, both in the Hall of Constantine at the Vatican.
Following Audran’s death in 1703, the business was continued by his widow ‘at the sign of the two golden pillars’ until 1718, when the remaining stock – and the premises – were bought from her by the printseller and engraver François I Chéreau (d. 1729), who had pre-viously studied under Audran; Chéreau’s son, François II, took over the business in col-laboration with his mother. This edition – likely printed by Francois II’s son, Jacques-François Chéreau – reuses the plates of the 1683 edition, which retain Audran’s imprint and privilège du roi. Jacques-François was found dead in the Seine on 15 May 1794, two weeks after his son-in-law had been sentenced to death as a political offender by the Revolutionary Tribunal.
We find another copy of the same edition in a gilt prize binding, given to the school by the prefect of the Département de la Seine-Inférieure at the end of the eighth year of the French Republic (i.e. 1800).
Outside continental Europe, OCLC finds two copies of this edition in the US (Minneap-olis, Yale) and only one in the UK (CUL).
For the first edition, see Brunet, Supplement 6752; Cicognara 291; Graesse I, p. 251; Robert-Dumesnil IX, p. 316, nos 186–215.
SKU: 2125163