Description

Very rare contemporary coloured bird’s eye view of La Rocheile with a numbered legend in the lower margin.

Jean Crépy opened his own print shop around 1690 and founded a dynasty that lasted a century. His son Etienne-Louis Crépy (c.1700-1759) took over the business in 1731 and was, in turn, succeeded in 1753 by his son, Jean-Baptiste Crépy, who ran the firm until it went bankrupt in 1790, during the French Revolution. During most of its century of operation the Crépy enterprise was quite financially successful, issuing numerous portraits, topographical views and maps. As most of the separately published views by Jean Crepy the present view of La Rochelle is exceedingly rare. 

References: N/A Rare. Cf. For the Crépy Family, see Maxime Préaud, Dictionnaire des éditeurs d’estampes à Paris sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 1987.) pp. 91-94.