About this Item
BOUND FOR MARIE DE' MEDICI, QUEEN REGENT OF FRANCE. Paris: En la boutique de Nivelle. Chez Sebastien Cramoisy, 1617. First edition. Quarto (9 5/8" x 6 9/16", 244mm x 168mm). [Full collation available.] With two engraved full-page portraits by Gaultier. Bound in olive morocco, likely by Clovis Ève. On the boards, a triple gilt fillet border surrounding a semis of fleurs de lis, gilt. In the center, the heraldic achievement of Marie de' Medici, gilt (Olivier 2504, fer 2). In the corners, the crowned ciphers of Marie de' Medici, gilt (Olivier 2504, fer 4). On the spine, a double gilt fillet border surrounding a semis of fleurs de lis, gilt. Title gilt between double gilt fillets. Crowned cipher of Marie de' Medici at center, gilt. Dashed gilt rolls to the head- and tail-pieces as well as to the edges of the boards. Marbled end-papers. All edges gilt. Spine sunned. Some scuffing generally, but altogether an exceptionally solid and unsophisticated copy (A2-4 on new guards). Text-block ruled in russet throughout. Excellent margins. A few pencil marginalia (X's generally). The occasional spot, with some inkstains on the title-page. Hexagonal monogrammatic bookplate of Jean Bonna to the front paste-down. Label of Adolphe Bordes on the recto on the final blank. Louis IX of France (1214-1270) was later canonized as Saint Louis for his zealotry; his reign is a peak of the French middle ages. At the age of 12, Louis became king after the death of his father, and his mother, Blanche of Castile, was regent until he came of age in 1234. Louis died in Tunis during a crusade, and in 1297, Pope Boniface proclaimed him a saint. This extraordinary arc was described in 1309 by Jean de Joinville. Why, then, was a new edition brought forth some three centuries later? Claude Ménard found in Laval a previously unpublished manuscript of Joinville's life of St. Louis, along with several Latin texts related to the process of his canonization. He consequently brought out a much-improved edition. Ménard's endeavors on the subject were not, however, coincidental. With the death of Henry IV his son Louis became king at the age of 8. Henry's widow, Marie de' Medici (1575-1642) served as her son's regent until 1614. The mirroring of the early years of Louis IX can hardly be ignored (indeed, the portraits of Louis IX and XIII literally face one another), and so with hope of a second golden age under a beloved boy-king, Ménard dedicated the work to his namesake. Florentine Marie was never fully accepted by the French aristocracy. She kept her own cadre of Italians at court, and was in turn viewed with suspicion as a bourgeois foreigner. By the age of 15, Louis XIII had consolidated enough power to shake of the maternal yoke, and with the "coup de majesté" banished Marie from court (under house-arrest at Blois) in April of 1617. Clovis Ève (ca. 1565-1635) followed his father Nicolas as relieur du roi (royal bookbinder), and is best known for these bindings "à semis" (or semées) viz. gridded with fleurs-de-lis and interspersed with the monograms and arms of their owners. The fate of all royal material hinges, notionally, on the French Revolution. Adolphe Bordes compiled a library with a special interest in French religious texts and heraldry and wrote on his booklabel that he acquired the volume from the library of William Beckford. This is lot 1190 in the second portion of his legendary 1882 Sotheby's sale. The book then came to be owned by Jacques Guérin, in whose Hôtel Drouot sale (7 June 1990) the present copy was lot 29. Guérin was one of the great twentieth-century French bibliophiles, and is best known as a collector of Proust (he owned the manuscripts of À la recherche du temps perdu). Its final owner before its acquisition (his sale, Christie's London, 15 June 2015, lot 101) was Jean Bonna, the renowned collector of early French first editions (especially illustrated), and he had a nonpareil collection of them. Olivier 2504 (binding).
Seller Inventory # JLR0201
Contact seller
Report this item
