VERGILE (Polydore)

Lot 21
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Estimation :
2000 - 2500 EUR
VERGILE (Polydore)
The Memoirs and History of the origin, invention & authorship of things. Made in Latin, & divided into eight Books [...] : & translated by Francoys de Belle-Forest comingeois. With a very complete table of names, subjects, and memorable things contained therein. Paris, Robert le Mangnier, 1576. In-8 of (56) ff., 863 pp. red morocco, triple fillet gilt, smooth spine decorated, interior roulette, gilt edges (Mouillié, with his label). First complete edition in French of the eight books of the De inventoribus rerum by Polydore Vergile (c. 1470-1555), secretary to the Duke of Urbino, then cameraman to Pope Alexander VI. Translation by François de Belleforest (1530-1583) who dedicated the edition to Antoine de Pons de Marennes, knight of the King's order, "most illustrious lord & mirror of the sçavants d'entre la Noblesse. A "portable library". The work, whose first three books were published in Latin in 1499, is presented as a portable library, where poets rubbed shoulders with historians and church fathers, [and] dispensed with the need to consult more extensive works. It lists "the civilizing myths of Europe, proposing one or more heroes, demigods or prophets, for each invention: religion, marriage, books, the art of memory, war, truces, fire, metal smithing, agriculture, architecture, trade, etc." (Frank Lestringant). A fine copy in Mouillié morocco, with a label with the address of the Hôtel de la Couture, n° 69 rue Saint-Jacques in Paris. The binding was probably executed around 1780 for the Parisian bookseller Guillaume-Luc Bailly (1743-after 1803), whose handwritten quotation can be seen at the foot of the last endpaper. The discovery and deciphering of the bookseller's markings is due to the detective work of Erick Aguirre. An active merchant, Bailly had made a specialty of rare and curious books, in particular heterodoxes, which were favoured by amateurs at the time, which he had luxuriously bound before offering them in a catalogue. The copy then appeared in the Méon library (small characteristic quotation in red ink at the foot of the title), then in the catalogue of the sale of the bookshop L. Potier, dispersed in 1870 (n° 2204). Some light foxing, notably on the title page. Minor rubbing, small tear skilfully restored on the upper cover, spine slightly lightened. (Lestringant, Le Livre des Inventeurs de Polydore Vergile in Ouvrages miscellanées & Théories de la connaissance à la Renaissance, 2003, pp. 37-56 - Caillet, n° 11089.)
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