Peter Paul RUBENS, . La Galerie Du Palais Du Luxembourg Peinte Par Rubens, Dessinée Par Les S. Nattier, et Gravée par Les Plus Illustres Graveurs Du Temps Dediée Au Roy. Published in  Paris, Chez le Sr. Duchange Graveur du Roy en son Academie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture..., 1710..
Folio. 55 x 44 cm. original endpapers;rear one detatched engraved title, engraved dedication and 25 finely engraved plates, with 3 double-page 24 are after Peter Paul Rubens, and one after Van Dyck good early copy suitable fro rebinding or breaking but sold as a set . . provenance bought Edinburgh over 30 years ago on the 'to do list' for restoration . . . cheaper collected  

 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England.


Jean-Marc Nattier 17 March 1685: , Parisian painter specialized in portraits, who died on 07 November 1766. Like his brother Jean-Baptiste Nattier [27 Sep 1678 – 23 May 1726], he worked as a history painter, as had been the intention of their father, the portrait painter Marc Nattier [1642 – 24 Oct 1705], but Jean-Marc is best known for his fashionable portraits. His mother was the miniature painter Marie Nattier (née Courtois) [1655 – 13 Oct 1703].
— As well as being taught by his father, Jean-Marc Nattier was trained by his godfather, Jean Jouvenet, and attended the drawing classes of the Académie Royale, where in 1700 he won the Premier Prix de Dessin. From around 1703 he worked on La Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg. The experience of copying the work of Rubens does not, however, seem to have had a warming effect on his draftsmanship, which was described by the 18th-century collector Pierre-Jean Mariette as ‘cold’. Nattier was commissioned to make further drawings for engravers in the early part of his career, including those after Hyacinthe Rigaud’s famous state portrait of Louis XIV (1701) in 1710, which indicates that he had established a reputation while he was still quite young. Although he was offered a place at the Académie de France in Rome on the recommendation of Jouvenet, Nattier preferred to remain in Paris and further his career. In 1717 he nevertheless made a trip to Holland, where he painted portraits of Peter the Great and The Empress Catherine. The Tsar offered Nattier work at the Russian court, but the artist declined the offer. He remained in Paris for the rest of his life.  .This is sold as a complete item suitable for breaking or for restoration  .