Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2016
Jules Maciet’s encyclopaedic collection of iconography in the Bibliothèque des Arts décoratifs, one of Paris’s most accessible specialist art libraries, offers the researcher an eclectic range of visual material from rare prints to ephemera from current elections. Its founder’s ambition that it should be exhaustive has been sustained to this day by a succession of librarians who have chosen to adhere to the original arrangement of material, which is based on a system familiar to users of print departments such as that in the Bibliothèque nationale. An index to engravers, publishers, and print-sellers, and thorough documentation of sources, make this 19th century vision a reference tool which continues to serve artists and other users today.