Forty-nine leaves including two frontispieces, a title page lettered VITA / DI SAN PAOLO APOSTOLO / REPRESENTATA IN DISSEGNO / ET DICCHIARATA / IN SCRITTO", and fory-six pages of illustrations, each with a page of manuscript text in Italian to the left numbered I to XLVI.
The album formerly included a letter from Nicolas Poussin to Cassiano del Pozzo (separated from the drawings and sold at Sotheby's, London, 16 March 1964, lot 249), which seems to have been the basis for the attribution of the drawings to Poussin as well (as indicated on the spine of the volume). It has been suggested that the letter was part of a group that passed from del Pozzo to the Albani family and then to the nineteenth-century collector Duforney before being dispersed in the latter's 1823 sale; it is not clear whether the present volume shares the same provenance, though the binding does appear to be eighteenth-century Roman.
Inscribed on verso of flyleaf in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand, "Mr. Lyon's Friend"; on folio 2, in pen and brown ink, in an older hand, "Illme Sigre Pron Colmo"; in another old hand; "Auuocato"; "Auacotos"; also various scribbles in a child's hand. Lettered on spine, "Desege/Di/N. Poussin".
Cameron, Allan, Mrs., former owner.
Adams, Frederick B., Jr. Fourteenth Annual Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1965 & 1966. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1967, p. 111.
Pierpont Morgan Library. Review of Acquisitions, 1949-1968. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1969, p. 136.