Portrait after the Painting by R. Tourniere.

Large engraved print, 520 x 370 mm. to plate mark. Pierre Louis Moreau de Morpertuis [1698 - 1759] was a French mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and botanist who was Director of the Académie des Sciences and the first President of the Prussian Academy of Science. The portrait shows him in his Lapland dress from the French Geodesic Mission of 1736, in which he helped measure the length of a degree of arc of the meridian. His hand is shown encompassing a globe, referring to his theory that the Earth is oblate (wider than it is tall); below that are scientific drawings. This is a proof copy of the plate with text handwritten in sepia ink; the text over the printed cross hatching above [description in French] and below the sledge [the name of the sitter] being almost illegible; the text below the plate reading “peint par R. Tourniere” and “Gravé par J. Daullé 1741.” According to the description of a similar copy in the British Museum “Advertised in 'Mercure', September 1741; this is a collaboration work where Daullé engraved the portrait, leaving the rest to Wille.”

Product Info

Publisher: Engraved by J. Daullé [and Jean Gerorges Wille]. 1741

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

Seller Info

MichaelKempBookseller

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