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GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785. Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.] image 1
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785. Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.] image 2
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785. Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.] image 3
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785. Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.] image 4
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785. Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.] image 5
GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785. Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.] image 6
Property from the Collection of Richard Harris
Lot 40

GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785.
Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.]

24 April – 4 May 2023, 12:00 EDT
Online, New York

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GAUTIER D'AGOTY, JACQUES FABIEN. 1716-1785.

Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps humain.... [Marseille: Antoine Favet for Vial, Le Roy, Marc-Michel Rey, 1759.]
Broadsheets (885 x 600 mm). 20 colored engraved plates, 18 of which can be joined together into 9 double-sheet plates, along with 2 single-sheet, and 13 (of 18) text leaves, along with 3 duplicate text leaves (tables 2-4). Disbound. Lacking text table 8 and tables 14-18, Some browning to plates and wear to edges.

FIRST EDITION - RARE COMPLETE SET OF GAUTIER D'AGOTY'S STRIKING PLATES. The plates form 11 images, 9 of them full-length, each comprising two plates that can be joined. Two single-page plates show a new-born child and the womb of its mother, while the other shows a dissected woman's womb with a fetus - with woman sitting and seemingly alive, rather than depicted as a cadaver. Gautier d'Agoty takes full advantage of his unique method of printing, using aquatint and his own coloring process. "This rare series of plates is perhaps the most astonishing of any Gautier made--the maturity of his art and colouring, strangely surrealist, showing his capacity for grandeur and gentleness equally. The twenty plates make up nine of the almost full-length figures, men and women; skeletal, back, front, pregnant. The final plate of a skeletal man is an extraordinary composition in itself-- bones of his legs against the darkest green, his feet resting upon inches of red base as a pedestal... The two single plates making up this group earn their place in the collection, quiet and imaginative compositions. One shows dissection of a new-born child, with placenta and umbilical cord and the womb above; the other has a typical Gautier notion of a nude with normal body and healthy though contemplative face, squatting with legs apart and knees pulled up to show a dissected womb with foetus in place. This is a stunning example of every aspect of Jacques-Fabien--the bravery of mezzotint and colour-print, its erotic and surrealist overtone" (Franklin, Early Colour Printing, pp 46-47). Choulant 271-72.

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