Academie royale de Chirurgie. Recueil des pieces qui ont concouru pour le prix. . .

FIRST EDITION, complete 4to. run (later volumes appeared in 12mo. only) Collects the prize competition papers of the Royal Academy of Surgery from the 1730's to the 1750's and features a frontispiece (repeated in each volume) by Francois Boucher, considered the greatest French master of the first half of the 18th century,and probably the most productive and versatile painter of the century. As royal painter, Boucher could probably be called on to grace the prize publication of the recently created Royal Academy of Surgery; nevertheless, a medical work illustrated by an artist of his rank was no less an exception then as now, and should be valued on that basis. Blake 2.