Abstract

Informal meetings of learned men bent on systematising scientific knowledge had been taking place in Paris since the 1620's, with Rene Descartes (1596-1650) among the first to assemble colleagues for that purpose. The iron and copper sextant brought to the Observatory site from the Bibliotheque du roi on 21 June must be the one that appears in the middle ground of the engraving by Sebastien Le Clerc printed as the frontispiece of the Academy's very first publication: Claude Perrault's Memoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des animaux of 1671. It was, among other writings, his early essay Le Portrait du Roy of 1663 that recommended Andre Felibien to Jean-Baptiste Colbert as a potentially valuable contributor to the Petite Academie's project de travailler la gloire du roi. Keywords:Claude Perrault; Le Portrait du Roy; Paris

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