118 - [Russia]. GEORGI, Johann Gottlieb. ROTH, C.M.

[Russia]. GEORGI, Johann Gottlieb. ROTH, C.M. 6 plates from [Description of All the Peoples Inhabiting the Russian Empire]. (Saint Petersburg, 1799). 6 copperplate engravings in black with watercolor highlights, measuring 21 x 13.8 at the edge of the plate, printed on laid paper, 34 x 24 cm (slight foxing and marginal soiling; minute tears in the margins, including a larger one of approx. 2 cm that has been discreetly restored on the reverse). Six plates engraved by Christoph Melchior Roth (c. 1720–1798), five of which depict women in traditional costumes, from the rare 1799 edition of Johann-Gottlieb Georgi’s work, Description of All the Peoples Inhabiting the Russian Empire: Their Daily Rituals, Customs, Clothing, Dwellings, Occupations, Entertainment, Religious Beliefs, and Other Notable Characteristics. The first edition was published in St. Petersburg between 1776 and 1780, in German, with a partial Russian translation. The work was fully translated into Russian and republished in 1799. The six plates, with trilingual captions in Russian, German, and French, are titled: A Samoyed; A Bratsk woman in Udinskoi Ostrog, full-face; A Mordvin woman, full-face; A Tatar Woman from Kazan, View from the Front; A Peasant Woman from Ingria; A Chuvash Woman, View from the Front. Johann-Gottlieb Georgi (1729–1802), a German physician, naturalist, and ethnographer, and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, took part in a vast scientific expedition across the Russian Empire between 1770 and 1774, from the Volga to the Altai Mountains and Lake Baikal. A pioneer of Siberian ethnography, he studied customs, beliefs, traditional dress, and ways of life. His observations resulted in one of the first major ethnographic syntheses of the peoples of the Russian Empire, illustrated with more than 100 engravings based on his drawings—a valuable historical, scientific, and artistic record.