Fascicule I, Plate 1, from Suite de Dix Huit Feuilles d'après l'antique...

The Jean-Baptiste Claude Richard (also known by his title abbé Saint-Non) embodied the important role of the amateur, an patron and connoisseur of the arts as well as a practitioner in 18th-century France. He was a skilled networker, a curious, innovative printmaker, and he supported his artist friends in their projects and travels. Saint-Non executed this suite of prints in Paris in 1763, representing antique fragments and reliefs he saw during his travels in Italy from 1759 to 1761. Most of the monuments are identified in the inscriptions by their locations in Rome. The works reflect French artists’ fascination with antiquity at the time, and the way in which these sources were transmitted to a larger public through the circulation of prints. Remarkably the suite of etchings remain as originally issued, in three groups of six deckle-edged sheets stitched together simply along the top edge.