Lot n° 9
Estimation :
20000 - 30000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 25 275EUR
TORY (Geoffroy)
The Art & Science of the true proportion of the Attic, or Antique, letters, otherwise known as, Roman, according to the human body & visaige, with the instruction & manner of making figures & letters for gold rings, for tapestry, windows & painctures. [...]. Paris, Vivant Gaultherot, 1549 [at the end: 26 August 1549].
In-8, 16 ff.n.ch., 144 ff. (incorrectly numbered 136, the foliation jumping from 128 to 137 and from 144 to 129) and 24 ff.n.ch., i.e. 184 ff. in all : fawn calf, double framed with three cold fillets, gilt fleuron at the corners, gilt motif in the centre obtained by two irons placed head to foot, spine decorated, modern black morocco case (period binding).
Second edition of Champfleury, one of the most famous books of the French Renaissance.
Published in the same year as Joachim du Bellay's La Deffence et illustration de la langue françoyse, it was published twenty years after the original edition, in a more manageable format: it was intended for use in workshops and, as such, has become rarer.
Manifeste pour une esthétique moderne du livre et défense de la langue française.
First published in 1529, this "is not only a treatise on typography or the aesthetics of the book, it is also a manifesto, twenty years before Du Bellay's, whose purpose is to exalt the merits and dignity of the French language. Tory seeks to establish a relationship between letters and the proportions of the human body (considered as the measure of all things). [...] More decisive is his action to deal the final blow to the old Gothic alphabets in favour of the Roman character. To do this, he designed alphabets of an elegance never surpassed. It is necessary, he says, "to write in French as François we are"; hence his concern to codify the grammar. He called for the use of the acute accent, the apostrophe, the cedilla [...]. His remarks on the phonetics of patois contributed to the history of the language and made him a pioneer of dialectology" (Ghislaine Quentin, in En français dans le texte, n° 41). In old French, champ fleury meant Paradise.
The work is illustrated with dozens of woodcuts by Geoffroy Tory, including thirteen plates of alphabets in various styles, as well as models of intertwined or fanciful letters intended for craftsmen.
With a few exceptions, the woodcuts and alphabets are the same as those of the original edition.
The figures and vignettes are imbued with sobriety and elegance, but not without a hint of preciosity. For the figure of the Gallic Hercules, the author indicates that he saw this "fiction in rich painture in Romme" and that he made a drawing of it. Two exquisite compositions represent the Triumph of Apollo and the Muses, and that of Ceres and Bacchus.
We also note the pretty woods showing how our Attic letters & the human body are very much in proportion. The models of alphabets and letters are very varied: Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Tartar letters, imperial and bullish letters, turn letters, shaped letters, bastard letters, gift letters, flowery letters, fantastic letters, utopian letters, intertwined letter figures, etc.
A very pleasant and rare copy in a contemporary Parisian binding of the same model as those executed around 1550 for Marcus Fugger.
Handwritten bookplate on the upper flyleaf: Est Renati Bassandi et casuorum 1565. From the library of
Paul Eluard, with his bookplate drawn by Max Ernst bearing the motto: "Après moi le sommeil."
Restored lower spine and corners; tiny split to the jaws.
(Brun, p. 304: erroneous collation.- Mortimer, French 19th Century Books, no. 526.- Geoffroy Tory imprimeur de François Ier graphiste avant la lettre, Écouen, 2011, pp. 70-105.)
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