L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, de Bernard de Montfaucon. Histoire d’un livre

Issued from the printing presses of a Parisian booksellers’ company, L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures counts among the great modern museums of paper. So Bernard de Montfaucon sets up an original way of approaching Antiquity: works of private collections and monuments are drawn, reproduced by the engraving and accompanied by explanations. At the same time, new discoveries broaden the knowledge of the past and give it substance by making it emerge from the ground. The echo of this archaeological essay goes on up to the present time. This new book gathers some twenty contributions of specialists, providing new documents and unpublished points of view on the genesis and reception of the Antiquité expliquée. Juliette Jestaz has taken out from her thesis at the École des Chartes (1995) several pieces she has updated for this book.