CHARLES LENORMAND:BEAUX ARTS ET VOYAGES. PARIS 1861 First edition, contemporary leather over boards slightly trimmed at edges, complete in two volumes 508p.,430p., text clean and bright with few scattered spots in very few pages of the second volume, overall in very good condition. Lenormand was one of the most influential French Art historians and travelers,he took part of the French Expedition in Morea in 1828 and was one of the top art specialists who visited Morea,he died in Athens in 1859 and his writings have been published posthumously gathering all his papers. The second volume contain all his precious accounts from the Expedition in Peloponnese in 1828-1829. It is one of the best record for the mission and complete the official reports published earlier. Lenormand took part in several archaeological missions of the expedition and describe in details the stark contrast between the immortal beauty of the past with the misery of the liberated Greeks. As his account avoid the censorship of the official publication of the expedition reports in the 1830s, is very precious. Lenormand was fascinated by the local customs,he was an ardent Philhellene who saw the modern Greeks as legitimate, albeit impoverished, heirs of the ancients.