SOLDATS ALBANOIS. FEMMES DE L’ISLE DE L’ARGENTIERE.

A lovely pair of engravings showing natives in their traditional costume. Obtaining the top one of Albanian soldiers, presented a challenge for Choiseul-Gouffier because of the Islamic prohibition of images. Indeed one of the soldiers told him that “for all the gold in the world, he would not consent to his portrait being taken”. The bottom engraving shows two women from the island of Kimolos in the Cyclades - one facing and one with their back to the picture. Their costume is very heavy and ornate, indeed Choiseul-Gouffier disparagingly commented on the “excès de son ridicule”. In 1776 Choiseul-Gouffier and the artist J.B. Hilaire joined a cartographic survey of the Mediterranean. Volume I of Voyage Pittoresque, his account of their tour of the Greek islands, the coast of Asia Minor, and of his travels on the mainland, was immediately acclaimed on publication in 1778. According to Brunet, it was incontestably the most beautiful production of this kind seen until then. Choiseul-Gouffier's work offered for the first time, illustrations of remote places that complemented the scrupulously researched narrative.

Fine condition, with good wide margins.