[GARDENS]. HIRSCHFELD (Christian Cay Lorenz). Theory of the art of gardens. Leipzig, heirs of M. G. Weidmann and Reich, 1779-1785. 5 volumes in-4, marbled calf, smooth spine decorated in the grotesque style, red and green titles, fillets on the edges, red edges (period binding). First edition of the French translation of this first-rate work on the art of gardens. Theorie der Gartenkunst, better known and distributed in the French edition, is the masterpiece of Hirschfeld (1742-1792), a German garden designer who was an ardent supporter of the English garden, or landscape garden, even though he had never visited England. The book covers the aesthetic foundations of his art, as well as horticulture (trees, lawns, paths, country buildings, etc.), scenography (monuments, ruins, caves and hermitages, etc.), and includes descriptions of the gardens at Sphienberg, Schanwzee, Zelle, Fredensbourg, Gravenstein, Eckhof, etc. The French translation, published at the same time as the German original, was written by Giovanni Francesco Salvemini da Castiglione (1708-1791), a Tuscan mathematician and literary scholar who was a professor at the Berlin Military Academy. The illustration consists of around 240 figures in the text, 45 of which are full-page, 6 hors-texte in the third volume and a folding plate in the fifth, all engraved in intaglio after drawings by Johann Heinrich Brandt. An exceptional copy in very attractive grotesque bindings in a remarkable state of freshness. From the library of the Count of Querhoënt, with late eighteenth-century stencilled bookplate. Usual scattered brown spots, more pronounced in the third volume. Ganay, n°105 - Berlin Kat. n°3353 (German ed.).