Boisserée, Sulpiz: Ansichten, Risse und einzelne Theile des Doms von Köln, mit Ergänzungen nach dem Entwurf des Meisters, nebst Untersuchungen über die alte Kirchen-Baukunst und vergleichenden Tafeln der vorzüglichsten Denkmale. Stuttgart: auf Kosten des Verfassers und der J. G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung 1821. Sheet size 82 x 64 cm. Includes a copperplate engraving showing a bird’s-eye view of Cologne from the north, after Schinkel, and 17 copper plates after Quaglio, Fuchs, Moller and others, featuring views, floor plans, elevations and cross-sections, as well as illustrations of capitals, columns and other elements; 2 plates depicting coloured stained-glass windows. Half-leather.

(Heavily rubbed; the spine covering is only partially preserved, with missing sections at the corners; bumped; the front cover has a crease. The interior is affected by foxing throughout, particularly at the outer edges. A water stain runs across the spine. The title page has a crease. Plates II, IV, VII and XV are folded, severed along the fold and reattached with fabric tape. Some are trimmed to the edge of the plate or just above it, and are slightly wavy or creased. A few plates are slightly more browned. Plate VI has a small hole within the plate.)

See Arnold Wolff’s scholarly companion volume to the 3rd edition (reprint 1979). Fischer, Cotta, Vol. 2, 1414, 1478, 1858 and 2069. Krudewig, in: Clemen, “Der Dom zu Köln”, p. 7. Literature on Rhenish Art 7001. - The extremely rare first edition of the monumental illustrated volume on Boisserée’s famous work on the cathedral, which provided the most significant impetus in the press for the completion of Cologne Cathedral. - The illustrated volume, which appeared in four instalments in 1823, 1824, 1829 and 1831, was accompanied by a companion text volume entitled ‘History and Description of Cologne Cathedral’. The first instalment of the text volume was delivered in 1823, whilst the second and final instalment, containing the explanations of the plates, was not published until 1832. Both the plates and the text volume were printed by Firmin Didot in Paris. - The so-called ‘Cathedral Work’ by the Cologne art collector and art and architectural historian Sulpiz Boisserée (1783–1854) was conceived as a promotional tool for the cathedral construction project. The author had already begun the preparatory work – such as the drawing and numerical recording of the existing structural elements – as early as 1808. According to A. Wolff (in the foreword to the accompanying booklet for the third edition), it is also ‘the most striking graphic and architectural work of art of the German Romantic period’. - The drawings for the copper plates were provided by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (title vignette showing a view of Cologne) and Maximilian Heinrich Fuchs (longitudinal elevation, main façade and towers, cross-section of the chancel widthways, cross-section of the chancel and narthex lengthways, painted glass windows I and II, chancel windows and individual parts), Angelo Quaglio (exterior view from the south side, columns, southern door of the main façade), Johann Martin Schauß (ground plan), Sulpiz Boisserée (ground plans of the various storeys), Johann Hoffmann (capitals, load-bearing stones), Jacob Carl Vierordt (tower windows, buttresses and struts), Georg Moller (interior view of the narthex), Ignaz Stoelzl (comparative plates I and II) and E. F. Ermeler (title lettering). The copperplate engravings were produced by Christian Haldenwang (vignette), Adolph Darnstedt (view of the south side), Franz Wolf, Christian Duttenhofer, Ernst and Carl Rauch, Johann Conrad Susemihl, Friedrich Geißler, Johann Michael Eberlein and French artists such as Étienne Besnard, Claude Moisy, Louis Sellier, Nicolas-Auguste Leisnier and others.