[APROSIO, Angelico (1607-1681)]
Bologna, 1673
Bologna: li Manolessi, 1673. 12mo (137 x 70 mm). 50, [10], "733" [recte 683] pp. 2 parts, separately titled. Engraved frontispiece of a library viewed through a columned doorway topped by the arms of the dedicatee Giovanni Niccolò Cavanna, engraved by Giovanni Mattia Striglioni after Domenico Piola, text woodcut of a monument with hieroglyphics (p. 71), woodcut initials and tailpiece. fine. 18th-century English(?) green calf, sides with leafy gilt frame, spine in 5 compartments, the second with red morocco gilt lettering-piece, the rest gold-tooled (scrape to front cover, extremities rubbed). Provenance: contemporary ownership inscription on title, partly effaced; neat annotations in a small English 18th-century hand on front flyleaves, citing references to the book; remains of removed bookplate on front pastedown. ***
First edition of the first catalogue of the first public library of Liguria, comprising the letters A-C only; no more was published. Although its organizational principles are eccentric, the detailed entries make this catalogue one of the earliest and most thorough bibliographies of Italian literature.
Established in 1648 in Ventimiglia, the Biblioteca Aprosiana was named after its founder, an erudite and temperamental Augustinian monk whose (adopted) name (his given name was Ludovico) is disguised in the title in an anagram. Thanks to his wide network of correspondents among Italian and European intellectuals, Aprosio managed to enlarge the already significant core of his own library by attracting gifts from collectors and scholars throughout Italy. Perhaps this focus inspired his peculiar decision to organize the catalogue by donors (fautori), in alphabetical order of their first names (luckily there is an index, by last name of authors). The catalogue, which occupies pp. 262-645, extends from the donor Agostino Calcagni to Curzio Picotti. While acknowledging the accuracy of the entries, Asor-Rosa in the DBI criticized Aprosio's "extremely rich and meticulous academic erudition" for being "pedantic and unsystematic, suffocating, disproportionate, and mostly an end in itself" (rare book cataloguers beware!).
The first section of the catalogue, which was edited by Lorenzo Legati, and financed by the dedicatee Giovanni Niccolò Cavanna, is the main source of biographical information about Aprosio. The brief Part 2 (pp. 667-682) contains a series of epigrams to Cavanna by Pier-Francesco Minozzi. In 1734 Johann Christoph Wolf published a considerably shortened Latin translation of the text.
By the end of Aprosio's lifetime, the library counted between 8000 and 12000 volumes. It was largely dispersed in 1798, with the Napoleonic suppression of the religious orders; portions were acquired by powerful local families, and others went to various libraries in Genoa.
The fetching library scene of the frontispiece shows a librarian on a ladder handing down a large volume to a reader; in front is a desk with a globe; in the foreground an onlooker contemplates the scene, and above an angel with a trumpet announces the Aprosiana.
I locate only 2 North American holdings (Thomas Fisher and Grolier Club). Besterman, World Bibliography of Bibliographies 3213; Melzi, Dizionario di opere anonime e pseudonime di scrittori italiani 1: 69; Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography, its history and development 67; Pollard & Ehrman, Distribution of Books by Catalogue pp. 262-263; Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 1: 650-653.
![Refranes o Proverbios Españoles traduzidos en lengua Francesa. Proverbes Espagnols traduites en François. [Part 2:] GARAY](https://rarebookinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/1562862987.0.l.jpg)
OUDIN, César (ca. 1560-1625)
Lyon, 1614
Lyon: Pierre Rigaud, 1614. 12mo (132 x 70 mm). [2], 376 pages (last 3 blank leaves removed). 2 parts, separately titled but continuously signed and paginated. Spanish text in roman types, French translation in italic. Pagination errors, signatures with crooked sorts on h4r and h6r. Woodcut printer's device on general title, a metalcut headpiece, woodcut initials. Upper margins cut close, shaving a couple of headlines. 19th-century brown morocco, bound for William Stirling Maxwell, with two different blind-stamped monograms on covers, spine gilt lettered, gilt edges, red endpapers (joints & extremities rubbed). Provenance: William Stirling Maxwell (1818-1878), supralibros, Keir House "Proverbs" collection bookplate (rear pastedown), small armorial bookplate with his "I am ready," etc. mottos (front pastedown); with Quaritch, collation note 1958; with Maggs, 1993, catalogue 1160, no. 27; Kenneth Rapoport, bookplate.***
Only Lyonese edition of a popular collection of over 2000 Castilian proverbs with French translations, first published in 1605, by a lexicographer, royal interpreter, and the first translator of any part of Don Quixote into French (part 1, published the same year as this edition). For each proverb the Spanish and French texts are printed together in one paragraph, differentiated by their type fonts. Gratet-Duplessis praised Oudin's proverb collection as the best French source for Spanish proverbs, noting the precision of the French translations, and the utility of Oudin's short explanatory notes.
Pierre Rigaud, the printer of this edition, did not do the text justice; frequent incorrect spellings and weird punctuation occasionally render either the translations or the originals nonsensical (e.g., "La mujer que poco hila, sempre trae mala camisa" is translated as "La femme qui peut filer [instead of peu file], toujours, porte meschante chemise" - p. 95).
This edition follows the Brussels 1608 edition in adding a second part, containing a 16th-century epistolary jeu d'esprit by the inventor Blasco de Garay: a series of letters composed entirely of proverbs and aphorisms. It concludes with the Dialogo entre un viejo e amor, a dramatic poem first published in 1511, attributed to Rodrigo Cota de Maguaque, in which Love persuades an old man who had been resigned to his solitude to try again, and then proceeds to mock him cruelly.
An appealing copy of a scarce edition. USTC, OCLC and NUC give 4 US locations (Hispanic Society, UC Berkeley, NYPL and U. Penn).
Palau 207295; USTC 5005619 & 6901883; Gratet-Duplessis, Bibliographie parémiologique 495 (1659 edition).
TROY LEGEND
Venice, 1626
Venice: Giovanni Antonio Giuliani, 1626. 16mo (142 x 99 mm). Collation: A-G16 (G16 blank, removed). [222] pages. Double column, small roman types. Large woodcut on title, 20 small woodcuts in the text, printed from four blocks (two used once each, the others repeated). Printing flaw, A9v. A couple of tiny marginal tears, slight creasing to leaves at end. 20th-century tree-marbled glazed paper over flexible pasteboards. Provenance: "Bagio," inscription on front pastedown; Ex fondatione Giorgii ---, illegible ownership inscription on title. ***
Unrecorded edition of a popular verse account of the fall of Troy. Part of the "prehistory of the Italian romance epic" (Everson), the Trojan tale circulated in several versions during the late medieval period. Like the other Italian versions, this anonymous poem in 20 cantos in ottava rima may have been loosely based on the 13th-century Latin prose narrative Historia Troiana by Guido delle Colonne. Both poems emphasize Rome's Trojan lineage. The earliest recorded edition of this version dates to 1483 (GW 12519, 1 extant copy), an inconvenient fact for a later attribution to the poet Jacopo di Carlo, who was in fact the printer of the 1491 edition.
In the sixteenth century the educated classes enjoyed the tale, which was sometimes even read in schools. The spread of literacy stimulated the production of cheaper, chapbook editions, like this one, thriftily printed in very small types, with repeated impressions of the woodblocks of battle scenes. The larger title cut, printed from a worn block which is missing part of the border, shows a small skirmish of soldiers in medieval armor.
Editions appeared throughout the 17th century, mainly in Venice, but also in Padua and Verona. Together ICCU and OCLC list thirteen 16th and 17th century editions (from 1562 to 1671), NOT including this one. All are rare. This edition not in ICCU, OCLC, USTC, etc. See Brunet 5: 964-5; Melzi, Anonime e pseudonime 3: 177; J. E. Everson, The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism (2001), pp. 43 ff; Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy (1989).
[SUDERMANN, Daniel (1550-1631?)]
[Strassburg], 1625
[Strassburg]: Jacob van der Heyde[n] sculpsit, 1625. Bound with: 50 Schöne ausserlesene Sin[n]reiche Figuren auch Gleichnüssen Erklärüngen Gebettlein und hohe Lehr[en] ... Der II. theil. [Strassburg]: Gedruckt bey Jacob von der Heyde[n] Kupferstecher, [ca. 1618-1620].
[And with:] Schöne ausserlesene Sinnreiche Figuren auch Gleichnüss Erklärungen und hohe lehren ... Der III theil. [Strassburg]: Gedruckt bey Johann Erhard Wagner In verlegung Jacobs van der Heyden, [ca. 1620].
[And with:] XXXXX Schöner ausserlesener Sinreicher Figuren auch gleichnussen Erklarungen Gebetlein und hoherlehren ... Der IIII theil. [Strassburg]: Ins Kupfer gebracht und in druck geben [sic] durch Jacob van der Heyden, 1628.
4 parts in one, small folio (232 x 145 mm), separately foliated (see contents below), totaling 197 leaves (including four engraved titles), all printed on one side only, including 12 small mounted engravings (2 mounted on versos of printed leaves). All but five leaves entirely engraved, the exceptions being five letterpress leaves with engraved vignettes; all but three leaves (fols. 48-50 of part 1, unillustrated) comprising text and a vignette illustration at top, most engraved by Jacob van der Heyden, with his monogram or signature, a few by Johann Erhard Wagner, nearly all signed "D.S." (the poet), printed from copperplates of various sizes. Most in fine, dark impressions. Interleaved, with 3 blank leaves at front and 33 at end.
Condition: Repaired marginal tear at foot of first leaf, fingersoiling to first few plates, occasional foxing, browning to plates 1-27 in part 2 and last dozen plates in part 4, 2 plates with small abrasions.
Binding: Eighteenth-century laced-case parchment over pasteboards, sewn on six thong sewing supports, manuscript title on spine (D.S. / Schöne / Figuren u[nd] Lehren / Theil 1-4. / Meyer Zeitbretrachtung [this last indication incorrect]), edges red-stained.
Provenance: The number fifty (L) added in manuscript at top of first title. Napoléon Fourgeaud-Lagrèze (1831-1876), lawyer, bibliophile, and bibliographer from Ribérac, Dordogne, author of L'Imprimerie en Périgord... 1498-1874 (Ribérac, 1875) and a few other works, engraved bookplate with motto "Res optimae res pessimae," his(?) manuscript notes on front free endpaper.***
Over two-hundred mystical illustrated poems by the prolific Reformist poet Daniel Sudermann, who conceived of text and picture as inseparable. This is an unusually comprehensive collection of his picture-poems.
Born in Liège, Sudermann was the son of a goldsmith and painter, Lambert Zutman or Sudermann. Although baptized a Catholic, he attended a Calvinist school. He spent his early career as a "housemaster" or tutor for the children of noble families throughout Germany and the Netherlands. In 1585 his new position as vicar in Strassburg brought him into contact with the teachings of Caspar Schwenkfeld, whom he met in 1594. Sudermann became a collector and disseminator of the medieval mystical texts of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, Heinrich Seuse and others, while composing hundreds of his own hymns and songs, written in Knittelvers couplets, and disseminated in ephemeral illustrated sheets.
Sudermann envisioned his poems with pictures. To realize his visions he called on the services of the eminent Strassburg engraver and print publisher Jacob van der Heyden (1573-1645); a minority were engraved by Heyden's lesser-known colleague Johann Erhard Wagner. Sudermann's "close relationship with painting and the graphic arts of his time is responsible for the peculiar form in which he published his poems. For the most part, each poem is entirely engraved in copper and is accompanied by an illustration ... His attention is devoted entirely to the heavens, but he employs concrete ideas in order to describe symbolically transcendent concepts" (Faber du Faur, p. 27).
Generally, each leaf includes a title or caption at top, surmounting an emblematic illustration, below which is the corresponding poem or song by Sudermann, with at the foot (in most but not all cases) a citation from the Bible or from mystics like Tauler or Eckhart. In the margins of the poems Sudermann's sources are indicated in very small calligraphic lettering. The engraved emblems are engagingly varied, dramatic mystical visions alternating with images of daily life, featuring distant landscapes or pastoral settings. The format of the plates is equally eclectic: the platemarks are of different sizes; in some the text is in one column, in others in two columns. Always finely engraved, mostly with elegant flourishes, the scripts come in a range of sizes, some tiny.
The bibliography of Sudermann's publications is confusing. Sudermann composed hundreds of poems, essentially hymns, to be sung to known melodies. They circulated in manuscript and print, and most were sold individually, as is evident from a glance at the 162 entries of VD 17 (Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachraum erschienenen Drucke des 17. Jahrhunderts). Collaborating mainly with van der Heyden, Sudermann produced a few collections of the poems, but it appears that no two copies are exactly alike. Already in 1864 the scholar Wackernagel had to concede defeat: "one must conclude that Sudermann decided the order and contents of the plates differently at different times, and that he produced various different editions of this collection" [that is, different editions of plates under the same titles, or the same titles with various alterations to the copperplates] (Wackernagel I, p. 713, transl.).
Comparison of this copy with the digitized copies of the University of Göttingen and the Getty (parts 2 and 3), and with descriptions of copies in the Faber du Faur catalogue, Landwehr, Praz, Wackernagel, and the Haus der Bücher Deutsche Literatur der Barockeit catalogue, confirms that no copies of any part are exactly identical; the differences range from re-engraved numbering to different selections of poem-plates. In this copy no series is complete, but the gaps are filled by other plates or letterpress sheets of Sudermann's poems (some with re-engraved numbering, or numbers added in ink). The five letterpress leaves would have been distributed individually as "fliegende Blätter" or loose sheets.
Contents:
Part 1: Schöne ausserlesene Figuren und hohe Lehren.
50 leaves, all but one engraved, the last 3 unillustrated. Plates 10, 11, 22, 23, 26, and 27 of the original series are absent, and are replaced by different plates or leaves of Sudermann poems, numbered in manuscript 31, 32, 33-35, and 30. In this group "31" and "33" are unsigned but appear to be by van der Heyden; "32," in narrower format and with an etched vignette, is signed at the foot by Johann Erhard Wagner; "34" is a calligram forming interlacing orbs and a cross; "35" contains text with a diagram of a clock face; and "30" is a letterpress sheet with an engraving by van der Heyden (see below).
Part 2: 50 Schöne ausserlesene sin[n]reiche Figuren ... II. theil.
49 leaves of which 2 letterpress. Many of the numbers were evidently altered in the plate (plate 40 is numbered "04"). Plate 9 is dated 1618. Without nos. 13, 18 and 19 of the series. Numbers 18 and 19 are replaced by 2 letterpress leaves with engraved vignettes, the first wider than the text block and neatly folded (short tear at top of fold), printed number 5 in right margin, the second numbered "29" in ink (both identified below). Except for the three missing plates, this copy matches the Göttingen copy, which also only has 49 plates (Faber du Faur calls for 50 plates). The Getty copy with this title is a nonce collection of plates. Some copies do not have the engraved numeral "50" at top or the mention Der II theil (both visibly added later).
Part 3: Schöne ausserlesene Sinnreiche Figuren ... Der III. Theil.
48 plates, numbered 1-16, 19-38, 43-44, and 10 small mounted plates, containing 57 separate poems and illustrations: plate 38 and the next two plates, with partly deleted numbers 43 and 44, each have four small scenes with short poems signed D. S. Ten small mounted plates follow; these have the same layout as the larger plates; most are signed D. S., one with van der Heyden's monogram. Some of these are transcribed by Wackernagel (V: p. 655-656), from the copy that he examined in Berlin (that copy was lost in the war).
The sequence of plates matches neither the Getty nor the Göttingen digitized copies. A few are in the Getty copy, which contains 49 unnumbered plates. The Göttingen copy contains only 9 plates, of which only the first plate, showing a globe, appears in this copy. It also has a different wording of the imprint, and the III Theil appears in a different place on the title.
Part 4: XXXXX Schöner ausserlesener Sinreicher Figuren ... Der IIII. Theil.
50 leaves of which 2 letterpress. Without plates 14-15 and 38-39. Two small plates mounted on the versos of plates 13 and 16 (from the same series as the mounted plates in part 3). Replacing plates 38-39 are letterpress sheets with engravings (numbered 38 and 39 in ink). The 46 plates which are part of the series match the Göttingen copy (the only other recorded copy).
The letterpress sheets are as follows (in order of their appearance in the volume):
- Ein tröstliche Lehr vnd Exempel Dass der Sathan unser aller Ankläger welcher uns wegen unserer Sünde Tag vnd Nacht verklagt von Gott verworffen seye ...
First line of poem: "Man sagt ein schön tröstliche Lehr." Imprint: Bay Jacob von der Heyden, s.d.
- Eine Lehr dass die Seel von aller Creaturen Anhang frey ... First line of poem: "Hör Mensch weil Gott sein Reichthumb gros." No imprint. Cf. Jantz Collection 232 (one of 8 leaves).
- Ein Tröstliche Lehr im innerlichen Leyden ... 1st line of poem: "Ich schweb uber ein Abgrund hoch," imprint: [Strassburg?] bey Jacob von der Heyden, [1620].
- Ein hohe Lehr durch sichtbarliche Gleichniss der Natürlichen Dingen zuverstehen gegeben ... First line of poem: "Wer haben will ein Kernen rein." No imprint.
- Ein Lehr Exempelsweiss uns fürgestelt ... First line of poem: "Ein alte Schlang suchet von Art". No imprint.
All but the second poem are from a set of 5 leaves: Wackernagel I: 712, 435; Landwehr 565.
With 206 poems on 197 leaves, all but 4 illustrated, this appears to be the most comprehensive collection of sudermann's poems to come on the market in years. In comparison, a copy with 61 plates or poems was offered in 1963 by the Basel booksellers Haus der Bücher, who described it "one of the most extensive" known collections of Sudermann's poems (it was one of the ten highest priced books in the catalogue of 1150 items).
American institutional copies of parts 1-3 are found at the Getty, Yale, and Univ. of Chicago; a copy at West Point appears to have all four parts, and one at Harvard, catalogued under the title Fünffzig schöner ausserlesener sinnreicher figuren, is described as having 90 plates. As noted above, contents of the volumes vary. The largest US collections of Sudermann poems are held by Yale (Faber du Faur collection) and Duke (Harold Jantz collection). The Jantz collection does not seem to include these titles, but some of the plates may appear under other titles in the holdings. Indiana University also has a collection of Sudermann's plates, many of which, they note, appeared in the Schöne auszerlesene Sinnreiche Figuren.
VD 17 23:633884U (part 1), 23:633882D (part 2), 7:719406G (part 3), 7:720280S and 7:720279D (part 4); Faber du Faur, German Baroque Literature, p. 28, nos. 96-98 (parts 1-3); Landwehr, German Emblem Books 571, 572, 573, 570; Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, pp. 507-508; Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zu Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts 1: pp. 712-721 (nos. 436, 437, 442, and 447), see also 5: 546-7; Haus der Bücher, Deutsche Literatur der Barockzeit (Catalogue 707), 1009. Cf. Thieme Becker 17: 17-18 and 35: 38; Killy, Literatur-Lexikon 11: 280-81.
[LA MOTHE LE VAYER, François de (1588-1672)]
Paris, 1667
Paris: chez Louis Billaine, 1667. 12mo (128 x 77 mm). [18], 194, [1] pp. Title with woodcut device of Thomas Jolly (who shared the edition), woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials; printed shoulder-notes. Occasional slight marginal discoloration. Contemporary French gold-tooled red morocco, sides with two concentric triple fillet panels, fleurons at corners of the inner panel, spine gold-tooled and lettered in six compartments, board edges gilt, gilt edges, marbled endpapers (in the style of Guilleminot-Chrétien no. 22, produced ca. 1668).***
First Edition, a lovely copy, of a paradoxically erudite exposition of the vanity of all branches of knowledge. While expressed in the language and concepts of the time, the work resonates with the 21st-century reader: La Mothe Le Vayer's argument was profound, for he circled around the principle of uncertainty, recognized by modern physicists as a fundamental property of our interactions with the world.
La Mothe Le Vayer, the quintessential libertin érudit, saw himself as the heir of Montaigne, like the latter's "adopted daughter" Marie de Gournay, whose salon he frequented. In this late work he passes in review each of the belles lettres (liberal arts or humanities): Grammar, Rhetoric, Physics (in the broad classical sense, including Natural History and Astronomy), Medicine (the most distinguished of the belles lettres, in his view, but still flawed), and Law (he notes that jurists are called letrados in Spanish), exposing the multiple contradictions within each discipline. Discerning endless inconsistencies and the impossibility of finding a single, unchallengeable truth in any of these subject areas, he affirms the ultimate folly of man's attempt to understand and impose order and logic on that which is infinite, constantly changing, and often irrational. His arguments are interwoven with classical Latin and Greek citations, testifying to his own massive erudition. And yet, he asserts, years of painful scholarship inevitably lead the scholar to nothing but uncertainty, "difficult to distinguish, if one is to speak frankly, from true ignorance" (p. 11).
Usually tolerant of humanity's foibles, La Mothe Le Vayer comes closest to expressing biting scorn only for those he labels "Dogmatists." A pedagogue himself (he tutored Louis XIV and his brother Monsieur), he touches repeatedly on questions of education, especially in the sections on grammar and rhetoric, in which he discusses, for example, the folly of those who insistent rigidly on proper grammar, thus ignoring the properties of real language.
The last section is devoted to the reading and writing of books, the one studious activity in which the author discerns genuine rewards, for the reader is preserved from the anxiety and boredom that plague so many, especially courtiers (those who "follow the Court"), and the writer has the satisfaction of leaving his thoughts and impressions for posterity. Topics include seductive titles which mask mediocre books, plagiarism, squeamish overuse of euphemisms and excessive avoidance of risky homonyms, but also the advisability of discretion and temperance in subject and vocabulary; choosing a happy medium in one's writing style between the prolix and the telegraphic; and suiting the style to the subject. In conclusion La Mothe le Vayer defends the compatibility of the Philosophie Sceptique with Christianity.
Four American libraries hold copies: U. Indiana, U. Miami, U. Michigan, and Harvard. Tchemerzine 3: 981.
NUÑEZ DE GUZMAN, Hernán (1474?-1553)
Madrid, 1619
Madrid: por Juan de la Cuesta, a costa de Miguel Martinez, 1619. 4to (212 x 147 mm). [4], 399 leaves. 2 parts, separately titled but continuously signed and foliated. Printer's woodcut device on titles. Double column, woodcut head-piece, tail-piece, and initials. Underlining in pink and blue pencil in second part; scattered foxing, occasional marginal staining or soiling, a couple of short marginal tears due to paper flaws (M3, V1). Contemporary parchment, title ink-lettered on spine, evidence of two fore-edge ties; a few deckle edges (later endpapers). Provenance: Kenneth Rapoport, bookplate, inserted purchase notes.***
The "most complete and most useful edition" (Gratet-Duplessis) of Nuñez's vast proverb collection, first published in 1555, comprising over 8500 short sayings, including some Portuguese, French, Italian and Galician proverbs. The longer second part contains Juan de Mal Lara's Filosofia vulgar (fol. 121 ff.), a more discursive selection of proverbs, first published in 1568. Mal Lara's extensive and erudite commentary could be considered too long in places (noted Gratet-Duplessis), but it is redeemed by his wit and above all his citation of a large number of little-known Spanish poems (ibid., p. 294). The edition concludes with Garay's Cartas en refranes (see Oudin).
Iberian Books B4409; CCPB CCPB000037314-1; Palau 253490 & 197518; Salvá 2112; Heredia 2763; Gratet-Duplessis, Bibliographie parémiologique 486 (Garay p. 292).
VISITANDINES - [CHAUGY, Françoise-Madeleine de (1611-1680); MENESTRIER, Claude-Francois (1631-1705), editor]
Annecy, 1693
Annecy: Humbert Fonteine, 1693. 4to (245 x 175 mm). [1] blank leaf, [10], 598 pages, [1] leaf (errata). Woodcut IHS (and VV or W) monogram on title, head- and tail-pieces and initials. Occasional light marginal foxing, small marginal dampstain to last dozen leaves, else fine. Contemporary acid-stained (granité) calf, triple gilt fillet border on sides, spine gold-tooled, morocco gilt lettering-piece, edges gilt over marbling, striking multi-colored veined pastepaper endleaves from a single fold sheet (a corner bumped, minor edge wear). Provenance: Paris,Jesuits, Professed house (Maison professe des Jésuites), inscription on title, Domus Professae Parisiensis Societ. Jesu, letterpress shelfmark on front pastedown (LXVI.K); sold 1765: Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de la maison professe des ci-devant soi-disans Jesuites (Paris, 1763, sale date probably 1765), lot 5727.***
Only edition of the fifth and last collection of lives of the early superiors of the order of the Visitation in France. All were written by Francoise-Madelaine de Chaugy (born Jacqueline de Chaugy), secretary of Jeanne de Chantal, founder of the order with Francis de Sales in 1610. As early as 1629, Jeanne de Chantal herself had started recording the lives of the order's first nuns (or professes), intending them to serve as models of behavior and spirituality for future sisters. Mother Francoise-Madelaine, an excellent writer and accurate memorialist, was charged with continuing the project. The first collection was completed in 1636, and circulated in manuscript. Following Jeanne de Chantal's death in 1641, de Chaugy's many pressing obligations forced her to set the project aside, and she did not resume writing until 1653. Chantal had never intended these Lives to be published; they were meant to circulate privately, in manuscript, among the various convents, which by the time of her death numbered over 85 in France alone. The order to publish appears to have come from the papal prelates in Rome, who had received copies from de Chaugy's brother (a principal proponent of beatification of Francis de Sales).
The first four collections of the Vies, containing biographies of 4, 7, 8, and 9 sisters respectively, were published in Annecy in 1659. The collections were appreciated by a devout public for the writer's intelligent, precise and enthusiastic narrations. After de Chaugy died in 1680, the mother superior of the Annecy convent, Aimée Bénigne de Lucinge (as explained in the preliminary epistle), requested of an unnamed "réverend père Jésuite" [Menestrier] that he edit the remaining papers, and another nun, Marie-Terese de Passier, took charge of the publication. The resulting present volume contains the lives of 12 nuns, starting with Mother Anne-Marie Rosset, "12th nun of the Visitation Sainte Marie, Professe of the first house in Annecy." The eleven other subjects, all of whom had died between 1656 and 1683, began their religious lives in the first convent of Annecy (Paule-Jéronime de Monthouz-d'Annemasse, Anne-Catérine de Beaumont, Marie-Marguerite Michel, Marie-Aimée de Rabutin, Françoise-Agnès Flocard, Françoise-Innocente de la Flêchere, Philiberte-Emanuelle de Montouz, and Marie-Angelique d'Attignat), as well as in the first houses of Moulins (Marie-Heleine de Chateluz), Pont-à-Mousson (Claude-Marie d'Auvaine), and Albi (Anne-Francoise de Hohenzollern). One woman did not quite become a nun: Marie-Angelique d'Attignat, a widow, died 5 months after her profession de foi, but she was included because of her well-known virtues.
Other biographies of Visitandines were published in separate pamphlets and other works, outside of these collections: even more so than for other religious orders of the time, the life stories of its earliest members played an important role in the identity and conceptual unity of the order (Dompnier, p. 19). Some of the earlier published lives were reprinted in the 19th century, but the Vitae of this collection do not seem to have appeared elsewhere.
This fine copy, adorned with exceptional endpapers, was owned by the Maison professe of the Jesuits of Paris, which welcomed resident theologians as well as scientists and musicians. These residents notably included the editor of this volume, Claude-François Menestrier.
I locate no copies in American libraries. Laroche, Répertoire bibliographique des livres imprimés en France au XVIIe siècle, Rhône-Alpes II (1996), p. 40, no. 91; Conlon, Prélude au siècle des lumières 6064; Sommervogel, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes publiés par des religieux de la compagnie de Jésus I: 1055; cf. Dompnier and Julia, eds., Visitation et visitandines aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (2001), pp. 16-22 and passim; N. Pellegrin, online Dictionnaire des Femmes de l'ancienne France, article (2008) on Jacqueline de Chaugy.
COURT SATIRE
Cologne,, 1680
Cologne,, 1680. Small 12mo (121 x 70 mm). 48 pp. Woodcut title ornament. Small stain to lower fore-edge of title-leaf. 19th-century jansenist green morocco, turn-ins gilt, gilt edges (by Duru, binder's stamp erased from front flyleaf), extremities scuffed, spotting to binder's flyleaves. Provenance: Armand Bertin (1801-1854), sale, Paris, Techener, 4 May 1854, lot 575; Félix Solar (1811-1870), sale, Paris, Techener, part 1, 19 Nov. 1860, lot 2039). ***
Rare expanded edition, probably printed in Holland, of a satirical pamphlet containing dialogues defining the court as a pit of corruption. In the first piece, the "Questions de la cour," the unknown author spreads his venom generally, e.g., "What is a King? - A man who is always deceived, a Master who doesn't know his job"; "What is a Monk? - A bogeyman [épouvantail] for children, and the meanest man in the world"; "What is Money? - That which one loses when young and hunts for when old, and the prime mover of the world." It concludes with the city everyone loved to hate: "What is Paris? - Paradise for women, purgatory for men, and Hell for horses."
The second piece, "Instruction à la Loy Mazarine," sinks its teeth into Cardinal Mazarin himself: "What is the sign of Mazarin? - The sign of the Cross, printed on gold and silver. How is it made? - By taking with both hands in the name of the King." Mazarin's "credo, profession of faith, and ten commandments" are equally vicious. Having targeted the Jesuits in the first piece ("What is a Jesuit? - A political sage, who uses Religion skilfully"), the Jansenists are blasted in the third, "Autre Catéchisme, à l'usage de la Cour Ecclesiastique de France Contre le Jansenisme."
Originally published in 8 pages in 1649 and 1652, during the first wave of Mazarinades (under different titles: Catechisme des courtisans de la cour de Mazarin and Definitions sur l'estat et condition d'vn chacun), the pamphlet's glib nastiness made it popular, and after Mazarin's death it was reprinted with additional material, in 1668 and 1672 (a 1669 edition contains only 18 pages and seems to have been a chapbook pamphlet). The miscellaneous extra poems in this edition include an imaginary dialogue between Colbert, Fouquet, and other high-ranking officials, Fouquet's satirical "confession," a rhyming "Request for protection from the King by the rats of Paris," two sonnets on the Great Fire of London, a few genuinely laudatory poems on Colbert, and one praising the King's choice of the duc de Montausier as tutor to his eldest son (the Dauphin), a charge Montausier filled from 1668 to 1680.
A fine copy from the libraries of two bibliophiles, both journalists and editors. From 1848 to 1851 Armand Bertin was the highly respected editor of the long-running Journal des Débats.
McGill holds a copy of this edition. Other editions are held by U. Wisconsin (Catéchisme, 1649) Harvard (Definitions sur l'estat, undated, Yale and Folger (Catéchisme, 1668).
Gay-Lemonnyer 1: 494-495; Moreau, Mazarinades 1: 651 (1649 edition); Brunet I:1656 (1668 edition).
SPONTONE, Ciro (ca. 1555-1612), attributed to
Venice & Verona, 1672
Venice & Verona: Andrea Rossi, 1672. 12mo (142 x 75 mm). Collation: A-F12 G4 (G4 blank). 150 pages. Forty-six woodcuts, of which one full-page, woodcut title ornament and initials. Wormtrack in gutter of last few leaves, affecting few letters on pp. 144-145, else a fine, fresh copy, untrimmed, in its original carta rustica binding.***
Rare pocket edition of a popular early manual of physiognomy, with crude woodcuts of male heads, all looking slightly concerned, as their simplistically lined foreheads each bear the burden of a different character type.
The work was first published in an elegant octavo edition in 1626. In the dedication of that edition, Giovanni Battista Spontoni, doctor from Peschieria, claimed to have found the work in his father's papers. Ciro Spontone (or Spontoni) served as secretary to high-placed dignitaries and diplomat; he wrote serious literary works, and this posthumously published foray into pseudo-science contrasts oddly with the rest of his oeuvre. The Dizionario biografico degli Italiani does not include it among his works. The present economically printed "popular" edition, whose poor models suffered at the hands of the remarkably unskilled wood engraver, is augmented with a short treatise on other aspects of physiognomy (the nose, the eyebrows, teeth, lips, voice, etc.) for men and women, and chapters on beauty marks and on human proportion.
ICCU ITICCUBVEE34899, a different issue(?) of this edition, with the same imprint and bibliographical fingerprint, but in which the last quire contains six leaves instead of four (3 Italian locations listed; OCLC adds Heidelberg); Caillet, Manuel bibliographique des sciences psychiques ou occultes 3: 10327.
[DÖRRIEN, Catharina Helena (1717-1795)]
Vienna, 1759
Vienna: chez Jean-Thomas Trattner, 1759. 8vo (159 x 99 mm). 56 pp. Woodcut title vignette initial, woodcut and typographic headpieces. Modern marbled paper covered boards, edges stained red.***
Forty short tales for children, written by a governess for her charges, first commercial edition (privately printed a year earlier).
Catharina Helena Dörrien, the daughter of a pastor from Hildesheim, was an accomplished botanist and botanical artist who compiled an important flora of the Principality of Orange-Nassau (Verzeichniss und Beschreibung der sämtlichen in den Fürstlich Oranien- Nassauischen Landen wildwachsenden Gewächse, Herborn 1777). The more than 1400 accompanying watercolors which she painted to accompany the flora were well-known in contemporary botanical circles, but they remained unpublished, a fact which consigned her name to near-oblivion.
"Not only an artist and botanist, she was also a writer of children's books, a compiler of pedagogical works and practical instructions to domestic economy, a translator of French works and an illustrator of scholarly books. Above all she was important for the positions she took on the question of girls' education, at a time when this theme was still largely ignored by pedagogical theorists ... Nearly 30 years before Campe and Pestalozzi Catharina Helena Dörrien took the stand that girls should also benefit from a well-rounded education" (Viereck, p. 8, transl.).
Dörrien's works for children were inspired by her experience as governess for the four children of the historian and jurist Anton Ulrich von Erath. The Joujou, dedicated to one of her charges ("Monsieur Georges Antoine d'E***H,"), contains stories in French for younger children, each featuring a child with a particular character weakness or virtue (L'enfant poltron, L'enfant étourdi, L'enfant charitable, etc.). While it is hard to imagine a 7-year old reminding his little sister to "profit from the salutary exhortations of our dear parents" (profitons des salutaires exhortations de nos chers parents, p. 10), these original moralizing tales no doubt succeeded in helping these upper-class children reach the all-important goal of learning a fine and flowery French.
OCLC locates 2 copies of this edition (BnF and Univ. & Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt). An enlarged edition appeared in 1760 and was reprinted in 1783; a bilingual Polish and French edition was printed in Warsaw in 1770, and selections were published in Russian in Riga in 1789.
Holzmann & Bohatta, Deutsches Anonymenlexikon, Bd.; 2, Nr. 11164; cf. Regina Viereck,"Zwar sind es weibliche Hände": die Botanikerin und Pädagogin Catharina Helena Dörrien (2000), pp. 38 & 80.
FASHION ALMANAC
Paris, 1779
Paris: Desnos, 1779. 24mo (109 x 62 mm). Recueil: [26] leaves: engraved title within decorative border and 25 etchings with engraving, including frontispiece; Sécretaire, 48 pp., double-rule page borders. [12]-page letterpress calendar for 1780. A couple of small marginal stains. Contemporary red morocco, sides with triple gilt fillet panel, smooth spine gold-tooled in compartments, the second with green morocco gilt lettering-piece, board edges with three-part sleeve for a stylus, blue endpapers, gilt edges (some spotting to covers). ***
A fine fashion almanac for ladies and gentlemen, showing various stations of society in appropriate dress. Dispensing with unnecessary text, Desnos's 24 fashion plates are equally divided between women - in pouf hairstyles or wearing complicated hats - and men. Shown en pied (full length) in pastoral settings, the two sexes are bound in facing each other (the engravings were printed two to a sheet on one side only and bound in as bifolia). At the foot of each engraving is an explanatory caption, providing fashion historians with exact terminology for certain styles and accessories in the last years of the ancien régime (e.g., "Jeune Dame en petit deshabillé du matin en amadis et à cocluchon avec un Bonnet en cascade et un fichu à 3 pointes"). Four captions are dated 1778.
Here, the first couple are the most luxuriously attired and are of the highest station; they may have been understood to portray the King and Queen. The lady (who holds a fan) wears a voluminous, farthingaled robe with an opening of lace and layers of embroidery, and an enormous feathered and beribbonned pouf; the caption reads: "Dame dans sa grande parure, coëffée avec un bonnet orné de plumes, et de guirlandes de chêne et de laurier." The gentleman, in a similarly richly adorned waistcoat, and wearing a telltale Maltese cross, is described as "Grand seigneur, décoré d'un Cordon bleu avec un St. Esprit brodé sur son habit aussi brodé sur toutes les coutures."
Desnos issued the etchings in various contexts: with the same title, along with 24 others, also in small format; in octavo format, with the engravings as printed, four to a leaf, with the title Recueil général de Coëffures de différens goûts; and recycled among various other later almanacs. The illustrations were inspired by (but not directly copied from) a series of etchings after Claude-Louis Desrais (1746-1816), published in 1785 under the title Suite des Nouvelles Modes françaises (Gaudriault, Répertoire de la gravure de mode françaises, p. 139).
As usual Desnos joined to this almanac his helpful notebook, the Sécrétaire, with its tables for household expenses, and many blank leaves for notes, all within rule borders; this edition concluding (pp. 41-48) with four leaves of Desnos' special coated reusable paper. An old note appears on p. 41 of this copy, as well as a partly effaced inscription on the front flyleaf.
The frontispiece is a bust portrait of a woman (the Queen) wearing the "Coiffure à la Belle Poule," a pouf hairdo topped by a miniature sailing ship. This famous coiffure had an American connection. It was worn by Marie Antoinette to celebrate the naval victory in June 1778 of the French frigate La Belle Poule against English forces, which marked the beginning of French involvement in the American Revolutionary War. Unfortunately the Queen chose this extravagant accessory shortly after having "piously declared that the nation needed new warships more than she needed new diamond jewelry" (Weber, Queen of Fashion, p.123), provoking an outpouring of satirical prints and pamphlets.
OCLC locates only the BnF copy (issue not stated). Cohen-de Ricci col. 69 (attributing the engravings to Desrais); cf. Grand Carteret 640.
FAN - EMBLEMS
[France, 1810
[France, 1810. Hand-colored engraved and stipple-engraved folding paper fan, printed on recto of a single sheet, backed in plain paper, mounted on original wooden sticks, the guards with narrow fillets of decorative bone near rivet, the rivet pins with decorative glass inserts; the open fan leaf measuring approx. 169 x 450 mm., total fan height (including mount) 255 mm. The allegorical scene colored in watercolor and gouache; stencilled decorative border with acanthuses at top, printed in gold, a gold border at top of verso. Condition: slight wear along a few folds. ***
A colorful woman's fan, probably produced in France for the Spanish market, on the theme of choosing a lover or partner.
The engraving shows, at the center of a clearing in a wood, a couple in ancient dress, the man with a helmet, armor and cloak, the woman with a yellow halo bearing the caption, "La inocencia guiada de la sabiduria para elergir un corazon" (Innocence guided by wisdom to choose a heart). Flanking the couple are ten hearts (some flaming), five on each side, each containing an emblematic figure with a one-word caption designating the pictured character trait. Those on the left are undesirable qualities (e.g., a butterfly, labeled Inconstancia), and those on the right are positive (a dog on a leash, labeled Fidelidad).
THOMAS A KEMPIS - DESMARETS DE SAINT-SORLIN, Jean (1595-1676), translator
Paris, 1662
Paris: chez Estienne Loyson [printed at the Chateau of Richelieu], 1662. Small 8vo (137 x 85 mm). [4] leaves, 211, [5] pages. Printed in very small, clear types. Additional engraved title, 4 engraved plates, two signed CM in[v] (Claude Mellan). Typographical head-and tail-piece ornaments. Occasional light foxing, old crease in a few leaves, overall a fine copy. Later blind-tooled black goatskin, sides with double rule border and large fleurons at corners, small fleurons in spine compartments, title gilt-lettered in second compartment, gilt edges, marbled endpapers (corners worn, joints and extremities scuffed). Provenance: Maurice Lafargue, lithographed bookplate dated 1918. ***
Desmarest's verse translation of the Imitatio Christi, printed on the private press of the Chateau of Cardinal Richelieu.
Jean Desmarets, later Sieur de Saint Sorlin, was one of the most prolific and versatile French writers of the seventeenth century. A polymath, versed in the arts, religion, philosophy and theology, he was the first chancellor of the Académie française, and a member of the inner circle of Cardinal Richelieu, who appreciated his vast culture and obtained for him important charges. After the Cardinal's death, Desmarets retired to the home of his patron's great-nephew Armand Jean de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1629-1715). He disappeared from the Paris scene for ten years, and reappeared revivified by religion. This verse translation of the Imitatio Christi was one of the first works that he published after his return to public engagement, and he spent his remaining years writing religious poems and anti-Jansenist polemics, in a state of religious exaltation taken by some contemporaries for insanity.
It was certainly thanks to the Duke that Desmaret's Imitatio was printed at the Richelieu chateau. The mystery of the chateau press of Jean Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu, known as Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister to Louis XIII and the most powerful non-monarch in France for 20 years, has never been satisfactorily resolved. The Cardinal seems to have decided in around 1640 to have a press installed in the magnificent chateau, or "utopian city," that he had had built on the site of his father's chateau (near Chinon, Indre-et-Loire), but no works are known to have been printed there until 11 years after his death in 1642. The present edition and a couple of other works and translations by Desmarets de Saint Sorlin were the only editions to mention the Chateau in their imprints, but a few later editions, including a Bible published by Sebastian Martin in 1656 (Delaveau & Hillard 1043), were printed in the same very fine small type used here. The types were later used in several reprints of works of Desmarets de Saint Sorlin, ca. 1678 and 1679, issued anonymously; all with a woodcut device imitating the Elzevir globe on the title-pages (see Nodier, and the Newberry Library catalogue description of a collection of these pamphlets, in a binding bearing the monogram of the Duc de Richelieu, call number VAULT Case BL624 .D47 1679).
The publishing history of this edition is complex. This is the second edition, last issue. Desmarest's version was first printed, in July 1654, in a duodecimo edition with the imprint of Pierre Le Petit and H. Le Gras in Paris (Delaveau & Sordet 295). That edition included an engraved title and an engraving at the head of each of the four Books, of which two by Claude Mellan. In October 1654 the first issue of the present second edition appeared, printed in very small types in small octavo format (Delaveau & Sordet 296). The letterpress title of the first issue bears the same Le Petit and Le Gras imprint, but with the additional note that it had been printed at the chasteau de Richelieu. Two further issues appeared in 1654 (Delaveau & Sordet 297 and 298, with variant titles and imprints, neither mentioning the Richelieu origin). The same "Richelieu" sheets were reissued by the Paris publisher Florentin Lambert in 1661, with the same four engravings as the July 1654 edition (Delaveau & Sordet 340). Finally, the Richelieu sheets were reissued by Estienne Loyson in 1662 (the present issue, Delaveau & Sordet 346), with the original engraved title of the first edition, from which the imprint was deleted, and the four engraved plates from that edition. It is the only one of the 5 issues to contain these plates.
The engraved title is set within an impressive interlacing wreath incorporating repeated crosses and thorns. The two Mellan engravings (Inventaire du fonds français XVIIe s. v. 17, no. 122 & 125) show a seated woman receiving the Holy Spirit, and an angel showing the Cross to a kneeling man; the others, unsigned (and inferior), show Christ appearing to a kneeling man, and a scene of Mass. These four plates appeared in a different order in each of the three editions in which they were included.
All Château de Richelieu imprints are rare. The Newberry Library has several, including this edition (?first issue). I locate one other copy of the edition in the US, at Berkeley (this issue) and 3 other copies of this issue overall (BnF, Bib. Ste Geneviève, and British Library). The other issues or states are equally rare, as is the first 1654 edition.
M. Delaveau & Y. Sordet, eds., Edition et diffusion de l'Imitation de Jésus-Christ (2011), no. 346; A. de Backer, Essai Bibliographique sur le livre De Imitatione Christi (1864), 2774. On the Richelieu press see C. Nodier, Mélanges tirées d'une petite bibliothèque, pp. 173-177; Brunet 2: 634; Peignot, Répertoire de bibliographies spéciales (1810), p. 71.
MOTHER OF PEARL BINDING
[France, 1840
[France, 1840. Binding size 95 x 62 mm., notebook of 10 narrower wove paper leaves (93 x 45 mm, 3 leaves with jottings in a childlike hand. Binding of dark blue velvet-backed mother-of-pearl, upper cover carved with a relief border of volutes, flowers and, at foot, two male profiles on a diapered ground, at center an oval cartouche with a pastoral scene of a woman and a man in 18th-century dress; liners and notebook covers of pale green moiré silk, three silk sheaths attached to inner borders of covers, for a stylus or pencil (absent, sleeves worn and torn), the notebook edges gilt.***
An irresistibly pretty binding on a notebook used by a child, who inscribed syllables and words (including Dodo and Canada) on 2 page openings.
FAN - [AUDINOT, Nicolas-Ménard]
[Paris, 1790
[Paris, 1790. Hand-colored etched and engraved folding paper fan, printed on recto of a single sheet, backed in plain paper, mounted on original plain wooden sticks, the open leaf measuring approx. 130 x 400 mm., total fan height (including mount) 280 mm. The engraving shows a scene from the pantomime Hercule et Omphale, hand-colored in watercolor, flanked by compartments containing engraved text, within a stencil-printed pink decorative border. In fine condition. ***
A rare and beautifully preserved printed fan showing scenes from a popular pantomime, performed by teenagers and children.
The first "theater" of the actor, playwright and impresario Nicolas-Ménard Audinot (1732-1801) was a marionette theater at the annual Saint Germain fair; each of his wooden marionettes represented an actor from the Comédie Italienne. His success led him to open a real theater, called the "Ambigu Comique," in 1769. Soon after opening, the players were changed from puppets to real children. In spite of restrictions posed on his theater by Audinot's competitors, the more "serious" Opéra, Comédie Française and Comédie des Italiennes, his popular theater on the boulevard du Temple attracted the largest crowds of all.
By the time of the Revolution, the gimmick of child-actors had grown stale, and Audinot replaced the smallest childen with teenagers. This period saw the vogue for heroic and historical "pantomimes," musical performances with dance. According to Soleinne, Audinot's Hercule et Omphale was first performed in 1790. The BnF has a manuscript score for the piece, containing the music by Jean-Baptiste Rochefort, with the date 1787 (possibly the date of composition).
In this fan, the engraved text on either side of the image reproduces the first part of the description of Act 2 from the libretto of which a printed edition (Paris: Potier de Lille, [ca. 1790-1794]), is held by the BnF and reproduced on Gallica The plot of the pantomime-ballet simplifies the story of Omphal (Queen of Lydia) and Hercules. The scene shown on the fan, set in a lovely spot near the sea, next to a mountain "bristling with rocks and bushes," is the happiest part of an otherwise violent and finally poignant ballet. Hercules, having killed the lion that threatened Omphal and her court, takes a rest under a tree. Love arrives during his nap, and her assistants disarm him, replacing his club with a beribboned staff. They dance and sing. Meanwhile Love has found Omphal in her pavilion on the mountaintop, and guides her down to Hercules. The fan shows the events occurring simultaneously. Love's helpers are children.
Fans like this one were probably sold as souvenirs at the theater. The style and coloring of this engraved fan resemble that of another keepsake from the Ambigu Comique, a rare harlequinade recently sold by us (see our catalogue 18). Perhaps the theater employed one or two regular imagiers for its "merchandise," but this is speculation, given the paucity of archival documentation of this sector of the popular print trade.
Soleinne, Bibliothèque dramatique III: 225; cf. E. Deligny, Histoire de l'Ambigu-comique depuis sa création jusqu'à ce jour (Paris 1841), p. 38; Enciclopedia dello spettacolo (1954), I: 1122.
STRAW MARQUETRY
[France, 18th century]
[France, 18th century]. A two-part round wooden box, approx. 68 mm in diameter x 30 mm. high, the top slightly rounded, top and sides covered in decorative designs composed of bands of straw marquetry overlaid with twisted and embroidered straw-work, the design on upper cover with sections in relief, the bottom of the box undecorated, the interior lined in strips of multi-colored straw. Condition: loss of one hook of the looped ribbon on sides, slight ungluing of straw decoration on bottom part; the straw lining with some swelling and irregularities, but overall in excellent condition. ***
A lovely decorative box, possibly a "boîte à poudre" for face powder. The cover is decorated with a flowering plant, its flowers made of tiny flat bands of straw with leaves of interwoven straw, petals and leaves outlined in embroidered straw, and the rest of the surface decorated with embroidered tendrils. The sides of both sections are decorated with a continuous looped garland.
"Starting in the 17th century and throughout the 18th century, elegant women carried around their necks or in their pockets a proliferation of bibelots, boxes, tubes and other miniaturized nécéssaires, most intended for perfumes or makeup, They also appeared in their bedrooms.`Their rooms are cluttered with thousands of boxes,'" complained one contemporary in 1642. (Caunes & Baumgartner, p. 148, transl). Sold by marchands-merciers, these accessories came in all sorts of materials, from the most expensive materials like porcelain or ivory, to the humblest, like straw. In spite of the inexpensive and accessible material, straw creations during this period, which often combined the techniques of straw-plaiting, straw marquetry, and a method of using straw in embroidery, could be exquisite.
The box was probably made by nuns. Straw marquetry and straw embroidery were associated early on in France with nuns' handiwork, in the production of both religious and secular objects, often produced for sale outside the convent. Straw was cheap and abundant, and working it demanded skill rather than any expensive materials or sophisticated preparation. To make a palette resembling wood veneer, wheat or oat straw was split, soaked for a time in water, and then ironed. From this basic technique, two main decorative techniques evolved, one using straw marquetry and the other relief embroidery. This little box uses both. An example of a larger box using the same techniques is reproduced by Caunes, et al., p. 62. A similar box, measuring approx 11 x 6 cm, is currently being offered by a New York antiques dealer (for $14,000).
While externally the colors of the box are somewhat muted, the original bright colors of the dyed straw strips have been preserved in its inner lining.
Cf. Lison de Caunes, Serge Goldsal, & Catherine Baumgartner, La Marqueterie de Paille (Paris: les Editions de l'Amateur, 1993), passim.
FAN - BASTILLE
[France, 1789
[France, 1789. Pierced brisé sandalwood fan with ornamental and figurative cut-outs, highlighted in gouache, and a mounted hand-colored print, probably a stipple-engraving, width (when open) approx. 487 mm., height 269 mm., the sticks with floral and arabesque cut-outs, and two large cut-outs of the Bastille, enclosed in foliage and flowers, with at center a medallion-shaped mounted print, heavily over-painted, of a woman and baby; the top of each stick with cut-out stylized prison bars, the guards with several cut-out windows; the Bastille images painted brown, all three images with blue gouache borders, the cut-outs outlined in green, pink, gray and blue gouache, additional painted flowers added to the guards; bone reinforcements at rivet. Some apparent restoration to the border of the print; later painted ribbon.***
This delightful and rare brisé fan combines a sunny painted decoration with a grim reminder of the hated prison, the Bastille, whimsically stylized with its openwork slat windows. From the top of each image of the Bastille emerges a pair of reddish flags, possibly indicating its rendition, but the significance of the image is not unequivocally clear. Before the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the prison was a recognized symbol of the monarchy's despotism. Since this fan's imagery includes nothing related to the chaos of that day, the opening salvo of the Revolution, it could conceivably have been produced before that.
At center is an unrelated colored stipple(?) engraving of a woman gazing at her new baby, sleeping in a cradle hanging from a tree bough. The combination of painted découpé work and a hand-colored print is unusual in fans of this period.
ANDRÉS de XÀTIVA, Juan (active 1487-1515)
Paris, 1574
Paris: Martin le Jeune, 1574. Small 8vo (151 x 92 mm). [6 ], "99" [recte 100] leaves (several foliation errors). Woodcut printer's device on title (Renouard 609), headpieces and initials. Shoulder notes including some Hebrew text. Occasional light foxing, but a fine copy. 19th-century red morocco gilt, gilt edges, by L. Tripon. Provenance: Paul Desq (1816-1877), red gilt bookplate, his sale, Paris, 25 April 1866, lot 119 (misdated 1584); Joseph Renard (1822-1882), Lyonese bibliophile, bookplate, (his?) neat ink notes in front flyleaf. ***
First edition in French of an ultimately ambivalent polemical work against Islam. First published in Valencia in 1515, the work was quickly forbidden by the Inquisition because of its inclusion of many transliterated Arabic passages from the Qur'an and the Sunna, resulting in the almost total suppression of that Spanish edition (3 copies located: BL, LC, and Brescia). Because of its rarity, the French orientalist Guy Lefèvre de La Boderie (1541-1598) was forced to rely on an Italian translation by Domingo de Gaztelu as the basis for his translation, which maintains the transliterations from the arabic. The learned notes, printed in the margins, are the translator's contribution.
Andrès, a native of Xativa or Jativa in Valencia, was, like his father, a Muslim legal scholar, an alfaqui. In an uncanny parallel to Paul of Burgos, a rabbi who became Bishop of Burgos and wrote a scathing polemic against Judaism, Andrés (the name he took at baptism) converted to Catholicism in 1487, became a priest, and, having been asked by his King and Queen to help convert the Muslim population after the fall of Granada in 1492, wrote this critique of the Muslim religion. Just like his ex-Jewish predecessor, this former Muslim used his intimate familiarity with the texts of his rejected faith to argue against them.
"Citing the Qur'an and hadith literature in Arabic transliterated into the Roman alphabet, Juan Andres produces something original in his work. Few sixteenth-century texts in the genre (whether in Latin or Romance) show such a command of primary material and at the same time participate so plainly in the Latin and pan-European polemic.... Though written in Castilian, the Confusión contains long citations from the Qur'an and Islamic traditions, transliterated into Roman script. It is not only a source of knowledge about Islam in medieval and early modern Iberia, but also about regional Arabic itself.... The Confusión includes an introduction and twelve chapters. The first ten chapters focus on Islamic history, doctrine, and tradition with the intent of providing as much explanation about Islam as possible while also attacking it according to the traditional polemic. The eleventh chapter is an apology for Roman Catholic orthodoxy, one that asserts the basic Christian truths via Islamic texts; the last chapter explains why Islam's rapid expansion should not be understood as divine affirmation of its validity, a perennial issue for Christians. The author addresses a priestly readership and clearly intends his text for such an audience, as we can see from his careful description of Islamic doctrine and history.... The work is `missionary' in the sense that it is a manual for Christian leaders and priests; it is not a text meant to be directly read by Muslims or by Moriscos" (Busic, pp. 88-91).
Busic argues, however, that the author retained a certain ambivalence, and hovered, like Spain itself, between two worlds, Muslim and Christian: "In Juan's text we find that neither he nor Spain is purely Christian or purely Muslim. They are not quite either.... At times ... the Qur'an and the Sunna are appreciated for what they represented to Muslims in Spain. Religions and cultures are intentionally separated, but sometimes they touch and transform each other, whether through belief, popular practice, or language" (op. cit., pp. 107-110),
Of this edition I locate only one certain copy in an American library, at the Morgan Library. (USTC records a copy at the UC storage facility the Southern Regional Library Facility, but the UCLA catalogue is unenlightening, as it is not clear whether it actually holds a physical copy.)
Palau 12176; Brunet I: 265; USTC 8560; BM STC French, p. 17; cf. J. Busic, "Polemic and Hybridity in Early Modern Spain: Juan Andrés's `Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán,'" Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter 2012), pp. 85-113.
FAN - SOCIAL SATIRE
[France, 1799
[France, 1799. Hand-colored etched folding paper fan, printed on recto of a single sheet, the etching showing two couples in a park, one pair with a young coachman in a small open carriage, with caption "Ma paole d'honneur! Elle est! Chamante!", hand-colored in watercolor, within stencil-printed pink decorative border; mounted on original plain wooden sticks, the open leaf measuring approx. 130 x 460 mm., total fan height 275 mm. Condition: a few tiny holes, of which two within etched area, small repair on verso of an outer fold. ***
A rare popular printed fan from the Directory period, satirizing the fashionable young men and women known as Incroyables and Merveilleuses, epithets based on their attitude of wide-eyed exclamation (à la "that's awesome"). The frivolity of that period was an understandable reaction to the horrors of the Terror, and it expressed itself in costume as well as attitude. Both men and women often wore huge neck scarves and large hats, visible in this print, in which, however, the more famous eccentricities of their dress do not appear. For example, while gaily attired in bright pink and gauzy blue, the ladies are substantially clothed, the season being perhaps too chilly for the transparent gauzy dresses associated with the Merveilleuses. Thus the signature give-away of the identity of the young beaux and belles in this fan is not their clothing, but the caption: a byword of Incroyables and Merveilleuses, besides certain set phrases (like "Incredible," "Marvelous," or "my word of honor"), was a dropping of the letter R, or its pronunciation in the English style, instead of the traditional rolled R (supposedly to avoid the R of Revolution). Here parole becomes "paole" and charmante "chamante," and strategically placed exclamation points convey their air of naive astonishment. They also lisped, so that their speech sounded like that of 3-year olds, providing ample fodder to satirists.
In early 1797, the print publisher Louis Darcis published a pair of caricatures of Incroyables and Merveilleuses after Claude Vernet. These were widely copied and imitated in the decorative arts, including for the cheap, mass-produced paper fans that popped up during the Revolutionary years, replacing the traditional luxury market of bespoke fans. One commentator remarked that if these images could only convey the speech of these privileged youths, the ridicule would be all the more striking (Menal, para. 7). Evidently the publisher of this fan (which looks nothing like the Vernet prints) took this advice to heart.
Cheap and mass-produced, perhaps, but now extremely rare: I locate no other copies of this fan. Cf. Cf. Sibylle Menal, "Les Incroyables de Carle Vernet: l'image comique et son contexte," Fabula: Les colloques, Le rire: formes et fonctions du comique, online.
CHEVILLARD, François (d. 1678)
Orléans, 1646
Orléans: Gilles Hotot [II], 1646. 8vo (161 x 96 mm). [40], 136 pp. Woodcut title vignette, tailpieces, and initials, woodcut and typographic headpieces. Printing flaw, p. 123 (2 words covered in the press); slight soiling to title, a few small marginal stains. Contemporary acid-stained calf, smooth spine gold-tooled, edges stained red, marbled endpapers (extremities rubbed).***
First? Edition of a rare collection of anagrammatic, devotional and occasionally macabre poetry. This is one of two editions or issues, both from 1646, of unknown priority. Chevillard was a canon of the church of Sainte-Croix in Orléans and later of the church of Saint-Germain in the same city. His little-known poems range from exceptionally good to outstanding (even Hoefer noted some "sparks of genius").
As remarked by Hoefer, it was bad luck to be born with the name Chevillard: the poet's friends couldn't get enough of anagramming his name, as they demonstrate here in eleven preliminary dedicatory verses, including one on the daring anagram Celuy-là fait Ronsard, by one Lucas. These are followed by 34 pages of Latin religious poems by Chevillard, each in a different meter: a poem to the Virgin in heroic verse, to St. Nicholas in Sapphic verse, to St. Francis in choriambs, etc. Next are a dozen religious poems in French, with varied and original contents, including a poem on the circumcision, on the flight into Egypt, on St. John in the desert, on Jesus obedient to his parents (a reflection on how a carpenter's son must have felt being the embodiment of the divinity), on the Massacre of the Innocents (a character study of Herod), a lyrical invitation to every part of the universe to praise God (ending with man: "toi composé d'or et de fange / Corps d'animal, esprit d'un Ange, / Ouvrage vil et précieux"...), a panegyric addressed to the Cross, and a slightly jarring Rondeau sur le Crucifix, in 3 quatrains with the capitalized refrain JE VEUX MOURIR.
The last section contains 65 poems, mostly anagrammatic verses on the names of fellow church dignitaries and local notables, some written for specific occasions. The poet's inventive verve is spirited and varied.
In the final poem he returns to the theme of death. "Plainte d'un melancolique" is an eloquent croak of gloom, in which the poet accurately portrays depression and its manifestations - lack of appetite, disgust with all things human, fascination with cemeteries, etc.
The manuscript correction of the imprint to 1646 appears to be accurate, as Hotot was not yet active in 1641; his father Gilles I Hotot, had died in 1632, and his mother's name as veuve appeared on their imprints until 1642, when he reached adulthood. USTC and OCLC locate one other copy with the Hotot imprint, at Orléans (pagination not given); two copies with the same pagination but the imprint of the Orléans printer Claude Verjon, at Harvard and Oxford; and two copies with the Verjon imprint, each wth a different number of preliminary leaves, and with additional engraved plates (BnF and Orléans).
USTC 6809997; Cioranescu 19187 (no printer given, 1646); Herluison, Recherches sur les imprimeurs & libraires d'Orléans (Orléans, 1868), p. 58, no. 212 (1646); cf. Hoefer, Nouvelle Biographie Générale 10: 272-3.
BERRY, Marie-Caroline, princess of Bourbon-Sicily, duchess of (1798-1870), owner - [ANDRIEUX, François-Guillaume-Jean-Stanislas (1759-1833)]
Paris, 1816
Paris: Vente, 1816. 8vo (200 x 125 mm). [4], 82 pp. Wove paper. Some light foxing. Bound in gold-tooled citron straight-grained morocco with arms of the Duchesse de Berry, pink glazed paper endpapers, gilt edges, by Simier, with his ticket as Relieur du Roi, de S.A.R. Madame, Duchesse de Berry et de S.A.R. Mgr le duc de Bordeaux. Provenance: the Duchesse de Berry, supra-libros and Rosny bookplate, sale, Paris 1837, lot 920; Alexis Rouart (1839-1911), booklabel; Eugène Aubry-Vitet (1845-1930), bookplate.***
The Duchesse de Berry's personal copy, bound for her by René Simier, of a special edition of Andrieux's popular play, performed on the occasion of her marriage. An Italian princess whose grandfather and father were Kings of the Two Sicilies, Maria Carolina's childhood in Naples and Palermo was cut short at the age of 16, when she was married off to Charles-Ferdinand d'Artois, duc de Berry, nephew of Louis XVIII and second son of the future Charles X, the last king of France. She had three pregnancies in rapid succession, and was pregnant again when her husband was assassinated by a Bonapartist in 1820. That son, Henri de Chambord, the last legitimate descendant of Louis XV, was recognized by Royalists as Henri V (see also our copy of Barrois, Dactylologie, 1850).
Of the Duchess's famously colorful life, which included a secret remarriage, attempts to foment a royalist insurrection, and a spell in prison, suffice it to note her lifelong devotion to the theater, and her importance as patron of the arts, including the new art of photography, and as eminent bibliophile. She had her books bound in variously colored moroccos, almost all by René Simier père, binder as well to her cousin Empress Marie Luise and to King Louis XVIII. Simier has been called the greatest French binder of his generation: his "variety and technique were superb; he had no superior and few rivals during his career" (Ramsden, French Bookbinders, p. 150). Forced into exile from France after her failed, coup, the Duchess was obliged to sell the important library that she had assembled at her chateau in Rosny-sur-Seine; the sale held in Paris in 1837 attracted a fiercely competitive crowd.
François Andrieux, elected to the Académie française in 1803, was a gifted creator of intricate comedies and a fierce opponent of Lamartine and the Romantic school. Les Étourdis, first performed in 1787, was his most durably popular play, praised for its brilliant versification, witty dialogue, and original characters.
This touching association copy later belonged to Alexis Rouart, art collector and an early collector of Japanese woodcuts, and to Eugène Aubry-Vitet, archivist-paleographer and historian, and confidant of another royal pretender, Henri, comte de Paris.
OCLC records 2 copies only, at Stanford and Duke; NUC adds U. Penn. Quérard, La France littéraire, I, p. 61 (other editions only); Catalogue de la riche bibliothèque de Rosny (Paris: Bossange, 1837), no. 920; Catalogue de livres rares et précieux très-bien conditionnés (Paris: Labitte, 1872), no. 170.
TORCHON-DESMARAIS, François (1736-1808)
Paris, 1771
Paris: G. Desprez, 1771. 8vo (200 x 130 mm). 126, [2] pp. Additional engraved title, 6 etched and engraved plates after Pierre Thomas Le Clerc by various engravers; woodcut headpiece by Caron, woodcut tailpieces, six different type-ornament headpieces. Printed on thick laid paper. Contemporary gold-tooled red morocco, covers with gold-blocked arms of Pope Clement XIX, fleurons at corners, smooth spine panelled with fleurons, stars, and other small tools, gilt edges (joints and extremities rubbed). Provenance: early price note on title; Pope Clement XIV (1705-1774), supra-libros; Jayne Wrightsman (1919-2019), bookplate.***
first edition of a poem using Jeremiah's Lamentations and the Babylonian assault on Jerusalem as an allegory for a bien-pensant defence of the Church against the philosophes and their leader Voltaire.
"The figure of Jérémie was so deeply embedded in French culture that in the vitriolic debates of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment, opposing sides could equally claim him as their own" (Callaway, p. 39). Using the trope of Jeremiah's tears, Voltaire had skewered Arnaud's 1752 Lamentations de Jérémie, odes sacrées, in a famous epigram, later "reheated" to make fun of Le Franc de Pompignan's Poésies Sacrées. While Desmarais was thus not the only 18th-century defender of the "True Religion" to embrace the Jeremiah allegory, he was evidently more successful than his predecessors. His five chants and poetic interpretation of the Epistle of Jeremiah "interweave the story of Jérémie, the Passion of Christ, and the troubles of contemporary French Catholics. Desmarais' Jérémie embodies the Baroque asthetic of intense emotion extravagantly expressed... [and] encodes the painful experiences of French Catholics smarting under the intellectual critiques of the philosophes and the undermining of their political power in the ruling Parlement." (ibid., p. 42). The Vulgate text of the Book of Lamentations and of the Epistle of Jeremiah are printed at the end.
The five chants and the Epistle poem are each illustrated with an engraving after P. T. Leclerc, explained on the facing versos. "Three of the six illustrations [for chants 2, 3, and 5] particularly embody Desmarais' fusion of Jérémie's, Christ, and the attack on True Religion in a single narrative" (loc. cit.). The illustration for chant 2, depicting the high priest striking Jeremiah, who looks suspiciously like Jesus, shows a woman nursing a baby and in the background a crowd in front of a building that contemporaries would have immediately recognized as the Bastille.
The author, an erudite Trinitarian, doctor of the Sorbonne, was named in 1770 prior and curé of the village of Regniowez (Regnauvé on the title), in the Ardennes. He founded a school in his village for local children, many of whom could attend gratis. A legend that he was one of the many illegitimate children of Louis XV appears to be apocryphal.
In a note to the reader the printer Desprez states that the original (unnamed) engraver was taken ill, hence several other engravers had to fill in on short notice (Pepin, Saillier, C. Macret, R. Delvaux, and S. C, Miger). His boast of the beauty of the typography is not unmerited, if only for the six delightful typographic bandeaux.
The preliminary matter of the second edition, printed in Ypres in 1772, includes a transcription of the author's letter to Pope Clement XIV, presenting him with a copy of the book, and the Pope's response. This copy with the Pope's arms may be that same copy (no copy is listed in the Vatican Library's online catalogue).
The dedicatee, "Madame," was then seven-year old Élisabeth of France, sister of the Dauphin and soon to be Louis XVI. The Morgan Library holds a copy with her arms, presumably the dedication copy, also later owned by the noted collector and philanthropist Jayne Wrightsman (most but not all of whose books were left to the Morgan). OCLC locates 2 other US institutional copies (UCLA and Harvard).
Cohen-de Ricci 298; Thieme-Becker 22: 523; Michaud, Biographie Universelle (1854), vol. 41:672 ("ce poëme qui respire une certaine verve poétique ..."); M. Callaway, Jeremiah through the Centuries (Hoboken 2020), pp. 39-42 & passim.
BENEDICTINES of AMBRONAY
Ambonay, France, 1740
Ambonay, France, 1740. Illuminated and stencil-printed codex on vellum (335 x 227 mm). 64 leaves, paginated [2] 1-122, [1 blank page], 124-126. 3 vellum leaves and one paper flyleaf at front, and the same at back (recto of the first vellum leaf at back with border rule in pencil). Finis, p. 122; p. 124 with headline Appendix. Textually complete, but with the decoration unfinished. Pages 1-17 with music, square neumes on eight 4-line staves in red ink, the liturgical text beneath each line; stenciled text in three sizes (details below), the text and music carefully stenciled in brown and red inks. Lightly ruled in lead throughout with single bounding lines. Multi-colored decorative capitals (hand-drawn) used for two lines of title and portions of major section titles, running heads and minor section titles in red. Finely illuminated, the illumination in various stages of completion: title verso with full-page table of contents within illuminated floral wreath; 18 historiated or ornamental head-pieces preceding each feast, plus 3 sketched in pencil; 13 tail-piece vignettes and cartouches; 30 four-line historiated initials, and 13 simpler three-line decorative initials. Blank space in lower half of title-page, for a projected vignette, possibly a coat of arms. List of contents on title verso within large floral border and head-pieces and initials on pages 58-81 almost fully illuminated, including with liquid gold; in other sections the ornaments are illuminated but with the initials or other areas intended to be painted in gold still in reserve (unpainted); other sections are blocked out in pale wash colors only. Pages 110 to the end unilluminated, with pencil sketches of 3 head-piece ornaments and 3 initial "I"s, and blank spaces for the remaining decoration. Condition: small flaw with evidence of an old repair in blank margin of pp. 53-54, light staining in blank margins of p. 45 and 54, occasional marginal finger- or dust-soiling, otherwise in fine, fresh condition. Binding: contemporary red velvet over pasteboards, evidence of metal furniture since removed (an outer border and central oval cartouches), later gold-stamped monogram on upper cover, gilt edges, marbled endpapers (the velvet frayed at edges and head and tail of spine joints); housed in a modern suede-lined goatskin folding case. Provenance: Ambronay, Benedictines, Congregation of St-Maur; 19th-century gold-stamped cipher on binding with monogram BVE surmounted by a coronet, matching bookplate; with Maggs Bros Ltd., pencil inscription in gutter of blank vellum leaf at front; modern notes in pencil on verso of front free endleaf. ***
A lavishly produced stencil-printed evangeliary on vellum, illuminated by hand. Printed and painted on high-quality vellum, the stenciled letters of the text were applied with great exactitude, evenly spaced and aligned, with no blotting, errors or corrections. Intended as a luxurious ceremonial lectionary, its decoration was, however, never completed. Compounding its intrinsic interest as an unusually splendid example of a stencil-printed book, the various stages of illumination of this evangeliary provide a remarkable glimpse into the production methods of illuminated manuscripts and books of all types. This unique stenciled hand-painted evangeliary amounts to a veritable "open book" into the practices and methods of illuminators in this late period.
This copy is the second part of a liturgical guide to the gospel texts for the most important feast days. It was produced in the Benedictine monastery of Ambronay, northeast of Lyon. It combines moveable feasts from the Proper of the Times with a selection of fixed feasts from the Proper of the Saints. These are presented in a single quasi-chronological sequence beginning with the Easter Vigil and ending with All Saints. Several important Benedictine saints or feasts are included: the translation of St. Benedict (from Monte Cassino in Italy to Fleury in France); Saints Placidus and Maurus (the first disciples of St. Benedict, who share a feast day); St. Hugo, Abbot of Cluny (the most important Benedictine monastery in France); and a feast dedicated to the saints of the Benedictine order. A short addendum at the end of the main text contains commemorations of the dead.
The Maurist congregation had been founded in 1618, by letters patent of King Louis XIII, in order to reform the disorganized and "lax" Benedictine monasteries in France. Most of the Benedictine houses gradually joined the new congregation, which eventually embraced nearly two hundred houses. Promoting a return to a strict monastic regime, the Maurist order came to be identified as a fount of the most rigorous ecclesiastical and historical scholarship; its monks produced over 700 works, many of which remain definitive.
Stenciled liturgical books were produced in European monastic institutions from the late 17th through the 19th century. Produced using small tin sheets with cut-out letterforms and ornamental forms, stenciling provided a short cut to manufacturing "manuscripts." Stenciling for liturgical books may have originated in the mid-17th century (at least that was the theory of Giles Fitteau des Billettes, who wrote the "pochoir" article on the process in the Description des Arts et Métiers, ca. 1700). Des Billettes noted that stencil-printing was used to produce the books needed for individual churches and convents, as opposed to religious books of more general application. The regular use of stenciling in monastic settings appears to have originated in France, before spreading throughout Catholic Europe. Stenciled books, which were produced in monastic scriptoria or ateliers, were often kept not in the monasteries' libraries, but instead were housed with the cantor (Schrott, p. 1). This meant that most did not enter the book trade during the secularizations of the late 18th century. Many were discarded, and those that did survive were often poorly catalogued, being usually incorrectly identified as manuscripts. While many or most stenciled liturgical books included simple stenciled decoration, more splendid examples were hand-illuminated, as here (Constantinou illustrates examples of each, see pp. 182 and 183).
As stated above, the stenciling of this evangeliary was immaculately executed, evidently by an artisan-monk experienced in the technique. Three stencil series appear to have been used, with differently sized text bodies: in the largest, used for pages 18-122 (17 lines plus headline), the height of the lower-case l and q measure 9 mm.; in the next size, used for the chant and for the addendum, pages 124-126, lower-case l and q measure 7 mm.; the smallest text, in which lower-case l measures 6 mm., is used for the table of contents on the title verso and a few sub-headings.
Interestingly, the title appears at first glance to have been lettered by hand, but in fact only the two lines in decorative foliate capitals were produced in manuscript. A close look shows that the other lines, including those in red capitals, were stencil-printed, and the small gaps of the stencils were carefully filled in by hand. The same appears to be true of the table of contents, which includes, at the foot, a small stenciled ornament.
The fine decoration of this evangeliary is dominated by lavish floral arrangements, with birds, angels and geometrical cartouches containing biblical scenes, religious emblems, and portraits of saints or clerics (that on p. 72 shows a monk and a nun). The working method of the clearly skilled illuminator(s) who decorated this book can be easily traced in its pages. It varied little from earlier illumination practice. Starting with lead sketches (see pp. 110, 114, and 120), he blocked out the colors in wash (see pp. 18-55, 98). He then added the details in deeper colors, in watercolor and gouache, supplying faces, modeling, background patterns, etc., but leaving blank the initials and other elements which were to be illuminated in gold leaf (as in the initial and head-piece on p. 91). Finally, he added the gold leaf: only the central pages of the book, from pages 58 to 81, include gold, but even these seem to lack borders or final background touches, as some pencil borders are still visible.
The soft pastel colors of the unfinished paintings themselves are highly appealing; and the juxtaposition of full color illumination and soft wash coloring is especially striking, as in the first page opening, where the richer colors of the floral wreath border contrasts with the gentle pinks and greens of the head-piece and initial on the first text page.
Literature: on stenciling, see Eric Kindel, Stencil: a descriptive bibliography, Reading: Éditions à jour, 2019; Meghan Constantinou, "A Secular Stenciled Book: the Library Catalogue of Charles-Antoine de Billy, 1742-ca 1760," Journal of the Printing Historical Society, third series 2 (2021), pp. 170-201; G. Schrott, "Schablonierte Choralbücher. Buchgeschichtliche Entdeckungen auf den zweiten Blick," in Ordensgeschichte. Ein interdisziplinäres Gemeinschaftsblog zur Geschichte von Klöstern und Orden, 2019. On earlier illumination practice, see J. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven, 1992).
EMBLEMS - ISELBURG, Peter (1568?-1630), artist and publisher
[Nuremberg, 1617
[Nuremberg: Iselburg], 1617. Bound with: BRUCK-ANGERMUNDT, Jacobus à (ca. 1580-after 1622). Decades duae anagrammatum et emblematum. Ex nomine Illustris ... Dn. Andreae Kochticzky ... Concinnatorum. Strassburg: Anton Bertram for the author, 1615.
2 vols. in one, 4to (194 x 154 mm). Iselburg: [8] leaves, comprising engraved title, trimmed to platemark and mounted (on a verso, the leaf frayed), engraved armorial dedication leaf with arms of members of the Nuremberg Senate, letterpress dedication (1 leaf), 1 blank leaf, and letterpress explanation of the emblems (3 leaves); 32 engraved plates of emblems by and after Iselburg. Minor marginal staining to first 3 plates. Bruck-Angermundt: [29] leaves. 20 etched emblems in the text; woodcut tailpieces and initials, typographic headpieces. Abrasion to a fols. D3v and D4v, affecting a few letters. Contemporary parchment over flexible pasteboards, manuscript spine title (recased, replaced upside-down, covers bowed). ***
A Sammelband of two emblem books, the first self-published by the artist; the second, privately printed, uniting two favorite seventeenth-century pastimes or modes of expression, anagrams and emblems.
I. First Edition of Iselburg's popular emblem book, based on paintings in the great hall of the Nuremberg Town Hall. Mottos like Minor esca maioris (The smaller is the food of the bigger), illustrated by a big fish snacking on a little one, embody moral precepts, explained in the Latin verses engraved below the emblems, and in the letterpress German text by Georg Remus; side-notes cite the classical and other literary sources. Iselburg designed the delightful emblems, engraved them, and printed the edition. Twelve emblems show animals, including realistic depictions of birds. Views of Nuremberg appear on a scroll at the foot of the engraved title, and in emblem no. 17.
NUC lists 6 US copies. VD17 23:233402W; Thieme-Becker 19: 265; Praz, 381; Landwehr German, 372.
II. Only edition of a playful Neolatin tribute from a humanist tutor to his aristocratic patron in Silesia (now Poland), combining anagrams and emblems, privately printed for the author's friends and students.
The 20 anagrammatic mottos are all composed from various spellings of the name and title of Freiherr Andreas Kochticzky (e.g., Andreas Kochtitius Liber Baro, with some cheating as Latin contains no K's). Kochticzky (or Kochticzki), born ca. 1568, was the well-educated scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest noble families of Upper Silesia. In his 20s, after his father's death, he completed construction of the family castle in Koschentin, installing there his private library, the largest and most important of the region. During his colorful but ultimately tragic life he served as governor of a Silesian duchy and as officer in the service of his co-religionist the Protestant Friedrich V of the Palatinate. When Kochticzky handed over the town of Cosel to the Protestant Union in 1626, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II charged him with treason, and he and his son Andreas Jr. lost the entirety of their lands and goods. Both then entered service with the Swedes. Kochticzky père participated in the Battle of Breitenfeld, the Protestants' first major victory of the Thirty Years War; soon after he fell into the hands of the Imperial forces, and in spite of his status as royal Swedish councilor, was imprisoned in Vienna, where he died in 1634.
Jacob Bruck-Angermundt, humanist and jurist, was tutor to several aristocratic Silesian families, living for several years with the Kochticzky family in Schloss Koschentin. His own preliminary dedicatory poem to Kochticzky is followed by four poems by others, all Silesian aristocrats, probably his pupils: Johann Bernhard von Maltzan-Warttenberg, Johann Georg Czigan, and two of Kochticzky's sons. A dedicatory poem to the author is by a humanist peer, Valentin Arithmaeus (1587-1620).
Bruck's twenty anagrammatic emblems are preceded by an essay on anagrams, a sort of how-to guide with examples; it includes a short section on numerology. For each emblem he proposes two anagrams. Beneath each emblem is a brief explanatory text, with a longer exegesis on the facing verso. The fine unsigned etchings show emblematic objects in the foreground of delicate distant landscapes.
Privately printed for the dedicatee and presumably distributed to Bruck's circle of Silesian humanists, this is the rarest of his four emblem books. VD17 and OCLC record only one copy, at the University of Rostock. VD17 28:743858L. Not in Praz, Landwehr, or NUC.
NB: photos 1-8 are of Iselburg; the remaining photos of Bruck-Angermundt.
FESTIVALS - MAIR, Johann Baptist von
Vienna, 1712
Vienna: Johann Jacob Kürner, 1712. Large folio (429 x 290 mm). [10], 76 pages, printed on thick paper. Etched and engraved frontispiece by Benjamin Kenckel after Antonio Beduzzi, 11 engraved plates of which 6 full-sheet (double-page) and one double-sheet and folding, by Johann Andreas Pfeffel and Christian Engelbrecht after Johann Cyriak Hackhofer; two large woodcut head-pieces, letterpress initials. Light dust-stain at gutters of a few plates, otherwise a fine, fresh copy. Contemporary speckled calf, spine in seven silver-gilt-tooled compartments, board edges also decoratively tooled, edges sprinkled red and blue (covers rubbed, head of spine chipped, slight worming to pastedown endpapers). Provenance: a member of the Tyrolean noble family of Brandis, engraved armorial bookplate with the initials H.A.G.V.B. [H.A. Graf von Brandis]; remains of a red wax seal at top of spine.***
Only Edition of a splendid Viennese festival book, documenting in words and scrupulously detailed images the events and celebrations surrounding the Austrian Estates-General's oath of allegiance to the new Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, on 8 November 1712.
As stated in the title, the text contains a description of "the most remarkable events" that occurred between the death (from smallpox) of his older brother Emperor Joseph I, in April 1711 and the ceremonial festivities in Vienna 18 months later, which symbolically ratified Charles VI's accession to the throne. Mair, a jurist, collected official correspondence and proclamations to document in this volume the solemn course of events. The fun, of course, is in the pictures, which show ceremonies, processions, and banquets attended by dozens of bewigged officials, but also, for the public events, hundreds of regular people. The large double-sheet folding plate (here in perfect condition), shows the procession from the royal court to St. Stephen's Cathedral, through the main square of the Graben, with the huge Plague Column at the exact center of the image, and the famous Elephant House on the right; the square is filled with sinuous lines of officials, musicians, and soldiers, and onlookers - fashionably or humbly dressed men and women, children, a nursing mother, dogs - who line the edges of the square, hang out of every window, and occupy the front foreground.
Dogs appear in the foreground of most of the prints, but they clearly enjoy themselves most in the five banquet scenes. The most elegant banquet, of the top members of the Estates (pl. VII), shows not only the seated guests (all men) at an immense long table groaning with dishes, roasts, pies, etc., but also the huge crowd of staff managing the event. Other meals of less elevated town representatives (including guild officials) eat in smaller rooms with less fuss, but the food and drink appear to flow as abundantly.
Such events being somewhat generic, the 11 plates had previously appeared seven years earlier, with slight variations, in a different festival book, Ludwig Gülich's Erbhuldigung, describing a meeting with the Estates-General of the previous Emperor. Unique to this edition is the marvelous perspectival frontispiece, showing an emblematic crowning of the Emperor by three graces with a laurel wreath, inconspicuously depicted and lightly etched at the center of an unusually low-angled scene, so that the viewer/reader looks up through the dizzily receding heights and vaults of the cathedral toward a crowded balcony high above.
I locate 3 copies in American libraries (Harvard, Folger & National Gallery of Art). VD 18 10221336; Berlin-Katalog 2877; Ruggieri (Catalogue des livres rares et precieux composant la bibliotheque de M.E.-F.-D. Ruggieri) 983; Lipperheidesche Kostümbibliothek 2625 (= 2nd edition: Sc12); Vinet, Bibliographie méthodique et raisonnée des beaux-arts 677; Bibliotheca Viennensis 1757.
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