250 - RANSONNETTE, Nicolas. First Lessons on Some of the Liberal Arts and Sciences.

RANSONNETTE, Nicolas. First Lessons on Some of the Liberal Arts and Sciences. First edition of this comprehensive technical manual, featuring 96 engraved plates, preserved in its original binding. Paris, Impr. Levraux, 1806. Quarto, light calfskin, smooth spine embellished with gold fillets and a garland at the foot, covers adorned with a cold-stamped latticework design and framed by a double cold-stamped fillet, gold roulette on the edges, blue speckled edges. 4 unnumbered folios and 201 pages, allegorical frontispiece, and 95 engraved plates. Joints and corners rubbed, upper cap missing, some foxing. First edition of this treatise bringing together the theoretical and graphic fundamentals essential to draftsmen, engineers, and artists in Napoleonic France. A pedagogical legacy of the engraver Nicolas Ransonnette (1745–1810), this manual of “lessons presented at the Institute of Sciences and Arts” compiles the scientific disciplines applied to the arts. In it, Ransonnette demonstrates his mastery of intaglio engraving through a step-by-step approach: geometric precision, the laws of perspective, and the study of anatomy. The work concludes with military and naval architecture. A fine copy in a contemporary binding.