70 - [Occitanie - Nouvelle-Aquitaine]. MELLING, Antoine-Ignace.

[Occitanie - Nouvelle-Aquitaine]. MELLING, Antoine-Ignace. A Picturesque, Historical, and Monumental Album: The French Pyrenees from Biarritz to Perpignan. Paris, Published by the Encyclopédie des Gens du Monde, (ca. 1830). Oblong folio, (1) folio (title page), 64 plates (including 1 map). Contemporary red half-basane leather with corner pieces (binding worn, some foxing and water stains). Album illustrating the journey of Melling and Joseph-Antoine Cervini through the French Pyrenees. Melling (1763–1831), an architect, painter, and traveler, worked in Constantinople, notably in the service of Princess Hatice, sister of the Ottoman Sultan Selim III, for whom he became the imperial architect in 1795. Upon his return to France, he served as painter to Empress Joséphine, and was then sent to the Pyrenees in 1821 by the French government to showcase the region’s landscapes, whose beauty could rival that of the Alps. The volume features a title page adorned with a vignette, 63 black lithographs by Piringer, Gibele, and Salathé, and a map drawn and engraved by Tardieu tracing the journey’s route.