My BasketDEZALLIER - CONCHOLOGY: PL. 7 - MOLLUSCS, SEA URCHINS, GOOSE BARNACLES, ANGEL WINGS shell print
This very rare and beautiful copperplate engraving, with fine recent professional hand colouring of Molluscs and articulated animals, is from the first German edition of “Conchyliologie ober Ubbandlung von den Schnecten, Muscheln” by Dezallier d'Argenville, published in Vienna 1772.
Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville (1680 -1765) was the son of parents who were established booksellers and publishers in the rue Saint-Jacques, close to the Sorbonne, in the Latin Quarter of Paris.
Under their influence, Dezallier was very well versed in the arts. He studied under some of the most respective tutors of his time and visited Italy on a Grand Tour in 1713.
Later, his occupations involved law, garden planning and hydraulics, print collecting, natural history, counselor to the King, and a very real passion for shells.
“Who can better know all the differences of shells than those who draw them after nature? The smallest fold, the delicacy of the shape of the contour, and of the mouth, nothing escapes, and nothing develops better their true character”
Dezallier 1742
"One of the best, most thorough and perfect works in this field". Nissen ZBI, 147. - Cobres 415, 8:
