An Essay on the Utility of Collecting the Best Works of the Ancient Engravers of the Italian School; Accompanied by a Critical Catalogue

4to.  250 x 200 mm.; [9 ¾ x 8 inches].  viii, 536 , [2] pp.  Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of the author and four plates on two folding leaves, bound at the end.  Modern green morocco spine over green cloth, spine with title in gilt and embossed in blind, all edges gilt.  Preliminary leaves a bit foxed, otherwise a very handsome copy.  Bookplate of Thomas Philip Earl de Gray on front pastedown; embossed stamp of Northwestern University Med. Library on p. v.

First edition.  Study of the Italian school of engravers from 1424 and the work of Maso Finiguerra and ending in 1560 and descriptions of the engravings by Dominico Pelligreni.  It is based on a collection of prints formed by Cumberland, and just before his death he gave them to the Royal Academy and the British Museum.  The goal of the publication was to describe the prints in his possession that he has studied and described and to create a list of prints which he is does not own and which is hoping to purchase.  In the process he hoped "to obtain the most complete enumeration of all the brilliant stars comprising this interesting hemisphere of art."  Included in his descriptions are engravings by Baldini, Botticello, Mantegna, Nicoletto di Modena, Marcantonio Raimondi, Gioseffo Porta, Francesco Marcolini, Antonio di Trento, Cesare Vecellio, and Andrea Andriani to name a few.  On the verso of the final leaf is a bibliography of Cumberland's published works.

George Cumberland (1754-1848) was an amateur artist, print collector, print maker, writer; lifelong patron of William Blake and supporter of the artists John Flaxman and Thomas Stothard. He was the author of Anecdotes of the Life of Julio Bonafoni, with a Catalogue of his Engravings, 1793, based on a collection of prints he collected and sold to the British Museum in 1820 for £397.  He began is study of Italian prints while living in Rome in 1788 and upon returning to England he began his collecting and patronage having received his inheritance at the death of his father.