from the Rothschild Ferrières library

A fine set of Demidoff's most sought-after illustrated books bound for Baron James de Rothschild.

The rich industrialist Count Anatoliy Nikolaevich Demidov, Prince of San Donato (1813-70) became a famous Russian art collector who assembled at his Villa di San Donato a large collection of Dutch, Flemish and Romantic masterpieces, as well as an impressive library.

Before his short and stormy marriage to Princess Mathilde-Létizia Bonaparte, he financed two scientific and artistic expeditions in Russia: the first in 1837-38 in Southern Russia and the second in 1839 in Northern Europe and European Russia. Although the account of the first one is significantly more common, the views published in the present second album are the most famous, since they included beautiful lithographs of the largest Russian towns and their celebrated places, such as the Winter Palace and the Alexandrine column in St. Petersburg, the banks of the Volga in Nizhniy-Novgorod, the Kremlins of Kasan and Moscow.

Folio (52.8 x 34.5 c), 2 vols; vol. I (La Russie Meridionale), 100 lithographed plates after Raffet, a few plates with cropped margins; vol. II (Voyage Pittoresque), tinted lithographed title-page and 100 lithographed plates, faint water stain to lower margin; both volumes bound in contemporary half green morocco over marbled boards, spines in parts with gilt tooling, large gilt Rothschild coat of arms on green morocco label in centre of upper boards, some minor repairs and wear, very good examples.

Brunet, II, col. 583-584 ; Carteret, III, p. 197 ; Vicaire, III, col. 167-168.