PREISLER JOHANN DANIEL (1666-1737) Osnovatel'nyye pravila ili kratkoye rukovodstvo k risoval'nomu khudozhestvu (Thorough Rules or a Concise Guide to the Art of Drawing): in 3 parts. St. Petersburg, 1781.

[18], [15], [10] pp., [49 of 54 plates]; 37.5 x 24 cm. Print run of 600 copies. Title and text in parallel Russian and German. In a contemporary full leather binding. In good condition. Rubbing to the binding, tears to the leather along the edges of the spine, endpapers renewed, stains and soiling to the text block, restoration and tears to some pages and plates, 5 plates missing. A fragment of a contemporary presentation inscription survives on the endpaper: ‘To Mr Akim Fedotov Vasilevsky, painter’. Page-by-page ownership inscription of the same owner. Johann Daniel Preisler (1666-1737), draughtsman and painter, was director of the drawing academy in Nuremberg, for which this manual, which became widely known, was compiled. It was the first Russian book on the visual arts, first printed in 1734, and for a long time it remained one of the main drawing manuals in the Russian Empire. Literature: SK XVIII, no. 5636; Sopikov, no. 8830; Obolyaninov, no. 2194.