Stirling-Maxwell, Sir William (publisher)
Solyman the Magnificent going to Mosque
£1,625
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 13 July 2022 from 10:00 BST
Description
From a Series of Engravings on Wood published by Domenico de'Franceschi at Venice in M D LXIII. Florence & Edinburgh: privately printed for Sir William Stirling Maxwell, 1877. Large folio, original green quarter roan, green cloth sides, illustrated throughout with facsimiles of engravings and woodcuts, including 2 portraits, decorative head-and tailpieces and initials, and 9 plates (all but one double-page), wear and loss to spine, sides rubbed and cockled, half-title spotted
Footnote
Note:
One of Stirling-Maxwell's 'pioneering books of facsimile prints using the new photolithographic methods' (ODNB), of which 100 copies were printed. 'Intended, apparently, for the decoration of walls, these woodcuts are exceedingly rare. Only two sets have fullen under my eye, one in the Print Room of the British Museum, and another in the Royal Collection at the Uffizi at Florence ... The Florentine set appears to have been made up from two or more impressions of the work. From that set the following photo-lithographic copies, of the full size of the original, were made for me by Signor pIetro Corrado Smorti in 1875' (Stirling-Maxwell, introduction).
Provenance:
1) Christie’s, The Property of Archibald Stirling of Keir, 22-24 May 1995, lot 712.
2)The Late Lord David Douglas-Hamilton (1952-2020).