LE ROY, Julien David (1728-1803). Les Ruines des plus beaux Monuments de la Grèce, considérées du côté de l'histoire et l'architecture. Paris: Louis-François Delatour, 1770.

Second edition of the book which introduced Greek architecture to France and an important entry in the "Greco-Roman controversy." The book was both extremely influential and highly controversial; the 1758 first edition beat Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens to print, stoking a bitter rivalry, and Le Roy's claims of the superiority of Greek art over Roman so enraged the Roman Piranesi that he created his great visual polemic, Della magnificenza ed architettura de'Romani, as a counter-argument. "The controveries stimulated by Les Ruines immediately following its publication in 1758 underline a deep epistemological rupture in contemporary antiquarian scholarship which, rather than diminishing the importance of Leroy's work, suggests that his book should been seen instead as a work of the greatest significance, one that grappled with applying new methods to the making of architectural history" (Armstrong). Cohen/de Ricci 627; see Berlin Kat. 1888. See also Christopher Drew Armstrong, Julien-David Leroy and the Making of Architectural History (2013).

Two volumes in one, folio (553 x 404mm). Half titles, 61 engraved plates by J.P. Le Bas and others after Le Roy (some spotting, affecting some plates; corner dampstain affecting outer margin of a few leaves). Contemporary mottled calf gilt, edges gilt (neatly rebacked and recornered, preserving original endpapers and portions of original spine).

The full-page plates are hand-colored on card as consistent with the deluxe issue, but the lithograph titles and the text pages with half-page vignette lithographs are printed with the letterpress, consistent with the ordinary, uncolored issue. This set is a mixed issue, likely assembled and with the smaller lithographs colored later in the 19th century.