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Mayer, Luigi.
Views in Egypt, Palestine, and Other Parts of the Ottoman Empire.
Publisher: Printed by Thomas Bensley, for R. Bowyer; London;
Date of Publication: 1801
Stock Code: 14111
First edition. Three volumes bound as one (as usual). Folio., pp., (1) Egypt, [4], 102, [2]; (2) Palestine, 47, [1]; (3) Ottoman, 40. Lacking the engraved portrait frontis of Mayer (as often) and with 94 (of 96) hand-coloured aquatints. Nineteenth-century half leather over marbled paper boards, blind rolls to boards, titled and decorated with rolls and floral ornaments in gilt to spine, marbled end-papers. Corners bumped and rubbed with slight loss, shelf-wear to boards, and a small area of fading to upper board. Contents generally clean and bright with very occasional light offsetting to text. A bright, wide margined copy of Thomas Milton’s engravings after Luigi Mayer. One of the great colour-plate travel books of the nineteenth-century. Milton’s aquatints are rich and detailed, displaying antiquities, architecture, views, and street scenes from the Near-East. Mayer was one of the most important European artists to depict the Ottoman empire in the late eighteenth-century and took a keen interest in the landscape, history, and daily life in the areas in which he travelled. These interests produced a layered picture of life in Egypt, Palestine, and the Ottoman empire, in which ancient monuments brush up against Mamluk soldiers, street pedlars, and holy men.

£3000.00