Description De l'Égypte Imperial Eagle Engraving, Savigny, Barraband, Circa 1826

Details

Description

Description de l'Égypte Imperial Eagle Engraving, Savigny, Barraband,
Paris, C. L. F. Panckoucke, circa 1826

This large elephant-folio engraving of … Read more Description de l'Égypte Imperial Eagle Engraving, Savigny, Barraband,
Paris, C. L. F. Panckoucke, circa 1826

This large elephant-folio engraving of the Eastern Imperial Eagle (Aquila heliaca), the Aigle de Thèbes, is Plate 12 of the Oiseaux (Birds) series in the Histoire Naturelle volumes of the Description de l'Égypte, the French state publication recording the findings of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt of 1798–1801. This impression, with the publisher's blind stamp in the upper margin, is from the second edition issued by Charles-Louis-Fleury Panckoucke in Paris in the 1820s, the Histoire Naturelle plates appearing around 1826. The eagle is shown life size, perched on the stump of a broken branch in profile to the right, the head slightly raised, the deeply hooked bill and bright eye finely drawn, the lance-shaped feathers of the crown and nape picked out as pale scales against the dark mantle, and the wing coverts, flight feathers and long tail built up in dense stipple and line work of exceptional delicacy. The plate was engraved by Louis Bouquet after a drawing by Jacques Barraband, the foremost bird painter of the Napoleonic era, and published under the direction of the zoologist Jules-César Savigny, whose name appears in the caption.

The species was first named in this very work. Savigny introduced Aquila heliaca in his Système des oiseaux de l'Égypte et de la Syrie (1809), the text that accompanies these plates, and this engraving is the illustration on which the name rests. He chose the Latin heliaca, from the Greek helios, sun, and the French Aigle de Thèbes to connect the bird with the eagle venerated in ancient Egypt and Syria; the eagle of Thebes remains the type of the species to this day. The print is presented in a mirrored frame with a silvered inner slip.

Dimensions
Height (framed): 32 3/4 inches (83.2 cm)
Width (framed): 25 1/4 inches (64.1 cm)

Inscriptions
Lettered upper left "H.N. Zoologie OISEAUX. par J. Cés. Savigny."; upper right "Pl. 12."; lower right, below the image, "Bouquet Sc." (Bouquet sculpsit, the engraver). Publisher's blind stamp in the upper margin above the plate number.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Historical Context
The Description de l'Égypte was commissioned by the French government to publish the work of the roughly 160 civilian scholars, engineers and artists, the savants, who accompanied Bonaparte's army to Egypt in 1798 and were organized at Cairo as the Institut d'Égypte. Coordinated from 1802 by the Commission d'Égypte under Edme-François Jomard, the first edition was issued in parts by the Imprimerie Impériale, later Royale, between 1809 and 1829 in some 23 volumes with nearly 900 plates, the largest printed work of its day; a second, more widely distributed edition was published by Charles-Louis-Fleury Panckoucke from 1820 to 1830. Its volumes on antiquities founded modern Egyptology and fed the Egyptian taste of Empire and Regency decoration, while the Histoire Naturelle volumes, with plates of birds, mammals, reptiles, fish and plants, made the first systematic survey of the fauna and flora of the Nile.

Jules-César Savigny (1777–1851), a protégé of Cuvier who joined the expedition at twenty-one, was responsible for the birds and for the invertebrates, and his fourteen bird plates present most of the Egyptian species at life size. The drawings were made in Paris by Jacques Barraband (1767–1809), celebrated for Levaillant's parrots and birds of paradise, and engraved by Louis Bouquet (1765–1814), who cut the majority of the natural history plates. The eagle, the ibis and the other birds of the Nile thus stand at the meeting point of Napoleonic ambition, Enlightenment science and the finest French natural history engraving of the age.

References
Savigny, Jules-César, Système des oiseaux de l'Égypte et de la Syrie, in Description de l'Égypte, Histoire Naturelle, Tome I, Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1809.
Audouin, Victor, Explication sommaire des planches d'oiseaux de l'Égypte et de la Syrie, publiées par Jules-César Savigny, edited by Alfred Newton, London: Willughby Society, 1883.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie, Paris: Description de l'Égypte, Histoire Naturelle, Oiseaux pl. 12, L'Aigle de Thèbes, Bouquet sculp., Barraband dess.
New York Public Library, Rare Book Division: Description de l'Égypte, Histoire Naturelle, Tome I, Zoologie, Oiseaux, pl. 12, Aigle de Thèbes (Aquila heliaca).
Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, Chalcographie: the original copper plates of the Description de l'Égypte.
Nissen, Claus, Die zoologische Buchillustration, Stuttgart, 1969–1978, ZBI 4608; Wood, Casey A., An Introduction to the Literature of Vertebrate Zoology, London, 1931, p. 552; Zimmer, John Todd, Catalogue of the Edward E. Ayer Ornithological Library, Chicago, 1926, p. 549.
Jobling, James A., The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names, London, 2010, s.v. heliaca.
Solé, Robert, Les savants de Bonaparte, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1998. See less