Italy.- Saint-Non (Jean Claude Richard, l'Abbé de) Voyage pittoresque ou description des royaumes de Naples et de Sicile, 4 vol. in 5, first edition, half-titles, engraved title vignettes by Augustin de Saint-Aubin, Pierre-Philippe Choffard and Varin, after Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Duplessi-Berteaux, dedication leaf, 293 plates, maps and plans only by Claude-Augustin Duflos, Le Roy, Prévost, Saint-Non and others after Fragonard, Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel, Hubert Robert, Saint-Non, vol. 3 lacking plate 11, plates 84-88 misnumbered, vol. 4 lacking 13 unnumbered plates, engraved illustrations and head- and tail-pieces, small ink inscriptions to front pastedowns, a few marginal tears, one or two plates partly detached, some water-staining to lower margin of vol. 3, some foxing and spotting affecting plates, contemporary calf-backed boards, triple morocco spine labels, worn, [Blackmer 1473], folio, Paris, de l'Imprimerie de Clousier, 1781-86.*** "One of the monuments of French eighteenth-century book production." Jean Claude Richard de Saint-Non went to Italy in 1759 and studied art and architecture in Rome where he met the artists Fragonard and Hubert-Robert, who were among those who contributed drawings for this work. He travelled to Naples with them in the spring of 1760, spending several weeks in Naples itself, as well as visiting Paestum, Pompeii and Herculaneum, where he drew copies of murals and antiquities. On his return to Paris in 1761 preparation of the plates was put in hand under the direction of Jean Benjamin de Laborde, co-author with Zurlauben of the equally monumental Tableau... de la Suisse. However the cost of such a lavish production ruined Saint-Non and hastened his death in 1791. The magnificent engraved plates include views of Naples and its environs, neighbouring towns, Vesuvius, churches, palaces and other buildings, catacombs, temples, tombs, grottos, ancient and Renaissance works of art, and many other architectural and scenic subjects, with the descriptive text by Dominique Vivant-Denon.