COYPEL, Antoine - Lot 48

COYPEL, Antoine Discours prononcez dans les conférences de l'Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture Par M. Coypel, Écuyer, Peintre du Roy, de Monseigneur le Duc d'Orléans Régent, & Directeur de l'Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture Paris, Jacques Collombat, 1721 A LARGE PAPER COPY OF A WORK CONSTANTLY CITED BY THE GREATEST ART HISTORIANS, FROM CHENNEVIÈRES TO SCHNAPPER. NOT CHOOSING BETWEEN DRAWING AND COLOR, BETWEEN RUBENS AND POUSSIN: COYPEL'S FORMULATION OF THE "TOINETTE PARADIGM ORIGINAL EDITION In-4 (248 x 185 mm). Finial with the royal coat of arms engraved after Coypel on the title page. Two large bands engraved by Audran after Coypel. COLLATION: 21 ff. n. ch., 189 pp. 1 p. and 6 ff. n. ch. CONTEMPORARY BINDING. Red morocco, gilded frieze decoration, arms in the center of the boards, ornate ribbed spine, gilded edges over marbling, lining and endpapers of gilded Augsbourg paper with floral motifs. PROVENANCE : Cardinal de Fleury (1653 -1753; arms) -- handwritten mark in brown ink in an 18th-century hand -- Hans Fürstenberg (1890-1982; bookplate; Paris, December 9, 2013, no. 211) Joints and upper cover restored, some spotting and wetness. The dedicatory epistle, printed with Moreau's fine type (and of which Collombat owned the matrices) is addressed to the Regent Philippe d'Orléans, for whom Coypel was the official painter. His famous lectures, based on the painter's tastes and practices, showcase the true artistic erudition of the man who championed color. But between drawing and color, between Poussin and Rubens, Coypel knew how to impose an intermediate position, illustrated by the paradigm of Le Malade imaginaire. For Coypel, choosing one or the other: "it's destroying one part to make the most of another (...) It's wanting to follow Toinette's advice in Le Malade imaginaire: it's wanting to cut off one arm so that the other will be better off, and to have one eye gouged out so as to see the other more clearly. It's true," I said, "that a painting cannot be perfect without coloring; but how can we expect coloring to survive without drawing" (p. 88 of this volume).