Cairo: Marriage Procession.

CASSAS, LOUIS FRANÇOIS . A Marriage Procession in Cairo. Marche d'un Marriage, dans la ville du Caire.
La pompe passe devant le celebre edifice, appelé Êl- Maristan ou l'hôpital(des foux.) Paris Paris: De L'Imprimerie De la Republique, An VII 1798
Copper engraved view of a marriage procession in front of Êl- Maristan Cairo from Louis Cassas' Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phoneicie, de la Palaestine, et de la Basse-Egypte. Black & white. Title in French; verso blank Good dark impression ; light foxing to blank margins.

LOUIS FRANÇOIS CASSAS (1756-1827)
was a distinguished French landscape painter, sculptor, architect, archeologist and antiquary.

He studied in Tours and Paris before traveling to Rome. His teachers included Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809), a Neo-classical painter and teacher to Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Louis Jean François Lagrenée the younger (1739–1821), as well as Roccoco painters such as Jean-Baptiste Le Prince (1734–1781).
In 1778 Cassas went to Rome, Venice, Naples and Sicily where he spent the first years of his youth in the study of ancient monuments. A commission by "une societe d'amateurs des beaux arts" in 1782 took him from Istria to southern Dalmatia, to make a series of illustrations of the antiquities on the east Adriatic coast. These drawings were later published as engravings and reproduced to 69 copperplate printings in his 2-volume book Voyage pittoresque et historique de l'Istrie et de la Damatie, published in Paris in 1802.

From 1784 to 1786, Cassas lived and worked at the French embassy. In 1784 he accompanied the Count Choiseul-Gouffier, the French Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, on his mission to Constantinople. Commissioned by Choiseul-Gouffier, he travelled from 1784 to 1787 engaged in making drawings for the Ambassador's second volume of Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce, published in 1809.
He visited Egypt from October to December 1785, and drew the antiquities of Alexandria, the pyramids of Giza and the mosques of Cairo. Shortly afterwards he made several drawings of Palmyra, in the desert of Syria, visited the Holy Land and illustrated the ruins of Baalbec in Lebanon. He also painted Palestine, Cyprus and Asia Minor, drawing ancient Middle Eastern sites, many of which had never been recorded.

At the beginning of the French Revolution, the artist returned to France via Rome, arriving in Paris in 1792. The result of his labours then appeared in the Voyage Pittoresque de la Syrie, de la Phenicie, de la Palestine, et de la Basse Egypte, which he began publishing in 1798.
Blackmer 295 (178 plates); Atabey 201 (179 plates); Cohen-De Ricci 204-205 (173 and 192 plates); RIBA 580 (183 plates). 300 by 470mm (11¾ by 18½ inches).   ref: 3280  €300