Petrucci, Raphael La Philosophie de la Nature dans l'Art d'Extreme-Orient. Illustré d'apres les originaux des maitres du paysage des VIIIe au XVIIe siecles de quatre gravures sur bois de K. Ehawa et S. Izumi. Paris Librairie Renouard 1906
First edition, folio, pp.[4], iv, 160, [2], 14 plates, 4 being tipped-in colour woodblocks. No.7 of 500 copies. A very good copy rebound in half calf, marbled boards. Half title a little soiled. With warm presentation inscription to Laurence Binyon, signed by the author.

A connoisseur's study of the painting of China and Japan, and the copy presented to the author's closest friend and colleague Laurence Binyon (see Hatcher, John Laurence Binyon, Oxford 1995, p.169). Both were fascinated by Chinese art, and among the earliest scholars attempting to interpret it for the western public. Raphael Petrucci, Marquis of Siena (1872-1917), studied Chinese art and language under Edouard Chavannes in the first decade of the twentieth century, and rapidly became an authority on Chinese painting and Buddhist iconography. He was "one of the ablest and most devoted students and interpreters of the art of the Far East". An Italian based in Brussels, his house was filled with his collection of Chinese and Japanese art. Petrucci worked on the collection of Chinese and Tibetan paintings brought back from Tun-huang by Sir Aurel Stein for the last three years of his life. "His most important work … is La Philosophie de la Nature dans l'Art d'Extrême Orient, a sumptuously printed folio published by Laurens in Paris, with illustrations by the Kokka Company, and written with as much charm as insight. Petrucci's knowledge of Chinese gave him an authority in interpreting Chinese art which writers on the subject have rarely combined with so much understanding of art in general, though as a connoisseur he was sometimes over-sanguine. His translation from a classic of Chinese art-criticism, originally published in a learned magazine, has lately appeared in book form." – Laurence Binyon, in his introduction to Petrucci's later book, Chinese Painters – A critical study.