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Antiquités mexicaines

Antiquités mexicaines. Relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806, et 1807, pour la recherche des antiquités du pays, notamment celles de Mitla et de Palenque;

Frontispiece lithograph by Godefroy Englemann to v 1-2.

Antiquités mexicaines: Relation des trois expéditions du capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806, et 1807
Paris: Bureau des Antiquités Mexicaines, 1834
Printed by Jules Didot

Guillermo Dupaix, a military officer and explorer, led three expeditions to record the pre-Spanish built environment of Mexico. Commissioned by King Carlos IV of Spain, Dupaix took with him artist José Luciano Castañeda, who is considered to have produced the first delineations of Maya architecture. Castañeda's ink and watercolor drawings and pencil rubbings were reproduced decades later by lithography in Paris, in a sumptuous atlas volume that complemented text volumes on the Dupaix expeditions by Henri Baradère. These included a preliminary discourse by the antiquary Charles Farcy, who has also designed the title page, lithographed by Godefroy Englemann. Its image illustrates the words from his preface, which translate:  "scholarly researches dissipate the clouds that envelope the Mexican monuments and reveal to the future the history of the past."

Hanes Family Library Fund
Rare Book Collection Folio-2 F1219 .A58 1834 superv'd t.1-2 and atlas