[PAINTING] - Gerard de LAIRESSE, Groot Schilderboek , Waar in de Schilderkonst in al haardeelen, Amsterdam, chez H. Desbordes, 1712. 2 parts in 1 vol. in-12 bound in vellum. Ex-libris J. de Stuers. "Gérard de Lairesse or Gérard Lairesse, baptized in Liège on September 11, 1641, and buried in Amsterdam on July 21 or 28, 1711, was a Dutch (United Provinces) painter, decorator, draughtsman, engraver and art theorist of the late Golden Age. His work belongs to classicism. In France, he was known as the Dutch Poussin [...]. The Great Book of Painters (Het Groot schilderboek) was first published in Amsterdam in 1707, and was reprinted in Dutch in 1712 (2nd printing), 1714, 1716, 1740 and 1836. The work was translated into German, English and finally French in 1787. The first five deal successively with technique, composition, the theory of art in Antiquity and in Lairesse's time, color formation, and the rules of light and shade. The author then turns to the various genres, starting with landscape. The seventh chapter deals with portraiture. The eighth discusses Greek and Roman architecture and their relationship to pictorial art, while subsequent chapters deal with ceiling decoration, sculpture and still life. Engraving is the subject of the thirteenth and final part of the book. Used in all the academies of fine arts, the work was to exert a strong and lasting influence on eighteenth-century art". (Wikipedia).