Michel-Gabriel Paccard Michel-Gabriel Paccard Michel Gabriel Paccard (1757–1827) was a Savoyard doctor and alpinist, citizen of the Kingdom of Sardinia. Born in Chamonix, he studied medicine in Turin. Due to his passion for botany and minerals, he met Horace-Bénédict de Saussure, who initiated the race to be the first to ascend Mont Blanc. Gaston Rébuffat wrote "Like Saussure a devotee of the natural sciences, he has a dream: to carry a barometer to the summit and take a reading there. An excellent mountaineer, he has already made several attempts." Paccard had a first, unsuccessful, attempt in 1783 with Marc Theodore Bourrit. In
Gabriel Perelle Gabriel Perelle Gabriel Perelle (born 1604 in Vernon, Eure, died 1677 in Paris) was a French draftsman and printmaker of topographic views and landscapes. A pupil of Simon Vouet, Perelle specialized in classical landscapes not dissimilar to those of Francisque Millet, although more obviously decorative. He founded an etching workshop, and his sons Nicolas and Adam assisted him. Perelle was also a pupil of Daniel Rabel and produced several hundred engravings both from his own drawings and from those of his competitors Israël Silvestre, Paul Bril, Jacques Callot, Michel Corneille the Elder, Jan Asselijn, Jacques Fouquières, Cornelis Poelenburg, and Sébastien