Lot 06032

FLANDIN, P. COSTE, ”Voyage en Perse de MM. Eugene Flandin et Pascale Coste pendant les annees 1840 et 1841”. Text: Paris 1851, Atlas: Paris 1843-1854.

FIRST and ONLY edition.2 Volumes of text in 4o and 2 Volumes of Atlases (Perse Ancienne), plus 57 unbound plates (Perse Moderne), in Plano Imperial Folio, 47x64cm. Text: contemporary leather over  boards, 568p., 536p., complete. Two boards detached, spine darkened and rubbed, text clean and very good. Atlases : two hundred fifty nine (259) Folio plates in total (of 344), several folded, presenting impressive panoramas. Contemporary binding, severely rubbed, but still holding, although the Atlases are very heavy. Some plates frayed at edges, some light spotting in few plates, but overall, very good condition of plates.

Flandin, a pupil of Horace Vernet & leading orientalist painter, travelled with the architect Coste following a French embassy towards Persia in late 1839. It was the first French embassy to Persia, since Napoleon’s time and the French government sent the best team of scientists to explore Persia, with special interest to the Persians ancient mysterious civilization.

The detailed early travel account starts from Constantinople, through Black Sea to Trebizond and after through the Pontic Alps and Armenia towards Persia, and their return through Mesopotamia and Syria. It is extremely valuable, as it was conducted by a well organized, fully equipped, official governmental mission that covered various subjects such as travel routes, ethnological structure of villages and towns, local customs or commercial opportunities. This early description of Pontic areas, Armenia, Kurdistan and Persia is full of precious information. This travel account was published finally in 1851, in the middle of a political turmoil in France, in small print run and is extremely rare.

The Atlas plates were prepared by Flandin, Coste and others and are considered, according to Sotheby’s, the best plates for Persia of the 19th century. It was the first scientific exploration of Persia and the Persian ancient civilization. Publication has started, in livraisons, in 1843 and 70 livraisons (of 4 to 6 plates each) were issued over a period of 11 years, up to 1854. The project of this publication to cover Ancient and Modern Persia never finished. According to Christies’s records, the last 40 years, only one Atlas has appeared complete and this without the text (present here) and 4 other collections of plates (as here) are known up to now. The work is EXTREMELY RARE. Not in Atabey or Blackmer.