BERNARD - MEDUSA: JELLYFISH engraving 1827

This very beautiful Jellyfish copperplate engraving by Robert Bernard, with fine professional later hand colouring, is from the natural history volume, "Tableau Encyclopédique et Méthodique des Trois Regnes de la Nature - Vers, Coquilles, Mollusques et Polypiers."  Edited by Jean-Guillaume Bruguiere and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and published by Agasse in Paris in 1827.

This edition formed part of the largest work of the Enlightenment, the monumental, multivolume, “Encyclopédie méthodique par ordre des matières" - "Methodical Encyclopaedia by Order of Subject Matter."  Published between 1782 and 1832 by Charles Joseph Panckoucke, his son-in-law Henri Agasse, and the latter’s wife, Thérèse-Charlotte Agasse.