Monumental publication on medieval arts. Sommerard's monumental publication on medieval arts: architecture, tapestry, goldsmithing, furniture, miniature, etc, illustrated with colour plates. Here in a fine crimson morocco binding.

'Like his family before him, Alexandre Du Sommerard (1779–1842) had a career in public service, first in the military, then in the civil service, then in the Court itself. Passion for his native country of France was even more manifest in his art collecting and studies, which is where he directed most of his energies.

The first items he acquired were paintings by contemporary French painters, but, after 1825, he devoted himself to art from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, with particular attention to arts with French connections. In his actions and his collector's tastes, Sommerard was likely influenced by Alexandre Lenoir (1761–1839), who rescued medieval treasures and monuments from destruction during the French Revolution and who later set up the Musée des Monuments Français.

By 1832, Sommerard had accumulated such a large collection that he purchased the late fifteenth-century Hôtel des Abbés de Cluny to house it. In each room of the building, he arranged furniture, objects, and textiles according to their function or symbolic value in an attempt to replicate the interior spaces of the past.

In 1838, Alexandre Du Sommerard published the first volumes of a multi-volume work, Les Arts du moyen-âge, which he intended as a history of French medieval art. His collection and study included early Christian and Byzantine art as the precursors to western medieval art. He felt that history should not rely solely on written sources and that historians and the public needed to comprehend the history of art as well.' (Dumbarton Oaks online).

First edition, 5 vols folio (55.5 x 27 cm), inlcuding one atlas vol. & 9 series of plates bound in 4 vols; 9 title pages for 1st to 9th series coloured blue & gilt, hand coloured general title, 507 lithograph plates including 368 chromolithographed plates (many with additional hand colour), fine contemporary crimson morocco richly gilt by John Wright of London, boards with broad gilt borders, spines in seven compartments, green morocco labels to second and third, others richly gilt, raised bands, all edges gilt, light fade to spines, a little minor foxing, a fine set.