A FINE FRENCH ROYAL “RELIURE D’AMOUR” - THE ROCQUENCOURT—FIRMIN DIDOT—BORDES

A FINE FRENCH ROYAL “RELIURE D’AMOUR” - THE ROCQUENCOURT—FIRMIN DIDOT—BORDES —HOE—GANAY EXAMPLE Leo the Hebrew (Judah Leon Abravanel) [trans. Pontus de Tyard] Leon Hebrieu de l'Amour. Two volumes in one. Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1551. Here is what AI says it’s worth: 25,025. Cost: Christie’s Paris, 21 November 2021, lot 44 - EUR 20,000. Octavo (6 3/8” x 3 15/16”, 162mm x 100mm): 2 binder’s blanks, A4 a-t8, AA4 A-Z8 aa-cc8 dd4, 2 binder’s blanks [$5 signed; –A1, AA1; c2 mis-signed “a2”]. 372 leaves (vol. I: 156 leaves, vol. II: 216 leaves), pp. [8] (title, privilege reference, 2pp. to the reader, 4pp. translator to his lady), 1-300, [4] (3pp. errata, blank); [8] (title, verses, 5pp. translator to his lady, blank), 21-418, [6] (2pp. errata, 3pp. privilege, printer’s device). With two wood-engraved vignettes (one on each title page) and a wood-engraved printer’s device (dd4v) in addition to several head- and tail-pieces. Bound (at least partly in the workshop of Louis-Antoine Boyet, active 1698–1733) in deep brown morocco. On the boards, all gilt, “HD” monogram at the center within a lobed square, each lobe with a fermesse (also “S fermé” or “closed S,” not unlike $); set within a scrollwork scalloped lozenge surmounted with a coronetted fleur-de-lys; flanking the lozenge the coronetted initials L (viz. Louis XIII) and counterchanged A’s (viz. Anne of Austria) top-and-bottom; set within a double-fillet lobed rectangular panel with fleurs-de-lys at the corner of each lobe (the left and right lobes scalloped, with a fleur-de-lys at the join), and with scrollwork corner-ornaments; pointillé corner-fleurons; all set within a double fillet border with rosettes at the corners. On the spine, five raised bands with a floral roll gilt. Panels gilt. Author gilt to the second panel. Gilt floral roll to the edges of the boards, continued at the inside dentelle. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Near fine, with some rubbing at the edges of the raised bands and hinges. A little split to the upper fore-corner of the front board. Light even tanning throughout. Ruled in sanguine throughout. A very few marginalia in an early hand (T4v offsetting to T5r, T6v), partially trimmed. Armorial ex-libris of de Rocquencour, the small label of Hubert de Ganay and an octagonal (shelf?) label “KKb” to the front paste-down (with “No 202” written in graphite at the bottom). Partially obliterated shelf-label (printed “?]4,102” with “202” written in graphite at the top) to the verso of the front free end-paper. Booksellers’ notes to the verso of the front free end-paper, the recto of the initial binder’s blank and the recto of the rear free end-paper. Leo the Hebrew, as he is called in English (Leone Ebreo in Italian; Leon l’Hébreu or, as here, Hebrieu in French), born Judah Leon Abravanel (or Abrabanel) ca. 1460 in Lisbon, was a poet and a philosopher who relocated to Italy (including the courts of Naples, Genoa and Florence). His Dialoghi d’amore (first edition 1535) explores philosophy through the lens of love, philo-sophia being love of wisdom. The dialogue — here between Philo and Sophia — as a structure descends from Socrates via Plato; from Boethius through the medieval and early modern period, the dialogue as a rhetorical device allows the author a great deal of flexibility in the presentation of viewpoints. The Dialoghi were popular, being translated into Hebrew, Latin, Spanish (there is lingering confusion over the language of the work’s composition; a Ladino manuscript (BL Or Gaster 10688) long thought to be the author’s autograph, is now ambiguous, and has lately been argued instead to be a Castilian translation of the Italian, rendered in Hebrew characters) and, as here, French before long, long agreed to be the work of Pontus de Tyard. Standing on the shoulders both of renaissance Neoplatonism and of medieval courtly romance, the work might be read on many levels, whence its appeal. At the very heart of the allure of this storied copy of Tyard’s translation — otherwise quite rare; only one copy beside the present one has ever come to auction; seven copies are recorded in institutional libraries — is its binding. It is almost certainly not the book’s first binding; the very few marginalia were trimmed in the rebinding process, and the ruling in sanguine — an affectation of manuscripts often reproduced for royal or princely copies of printed books — was likely carried out at the same time (it is also possible to see faintly the marbling of the fore-edge of the text-block below the gilding). Dealing, therefore, with a book whose current state is not its earliest, we can challenge an assumption of its previous cataloguers: that the binding is entirely synchronous. The fleurs-de-lys and the coronetted initials rather overshadow the joined “HD” at the center. Closer inspection reveals that the HD (typographically distinct) with its lobed square panel are impressed much less deeply than the surrounding tool-marks. Let us, therefore, consider that element — including its lobed panel with the fermesses, which henceforth will be dubbed “HD fermé” — as the first phase of this binding. The fermesses at the cardinal points surrounding the monogram are of particular interest. The symbol grew in popularity during the XVIc, and while much ink has been spilled on its meaning, the communis opinio is that it has something to do with friendship and intimacy; indeed, Anne of Austria (on whom more below) used it regularly in her correspondence with Cardinal Mazarin.[1] Consequently, the fermesses’ surrounding the monogram has led some to believe that the two initials refer to two people. The principal propositions have been Henri II and Diane de Poitiers (his mistress) and Henri IV and Gabrielle d’Estrées (his mistress). The book was published in 1551 and could, therefore, have been bound before Henri II’s death in 1559 (or before Diane de Poitiers’s in 1566). Henri and Diane owned many books jointly, but their iconography does not match that of the present volume (see OHR XXV pl. 2493); Diane was usually represented by crescents. The latter allows for the interval: Henri IV reigned till his death in 1610 (Gabrielle d’Estrées died in 1599). This is particularly appealing because of the homophony: the stroke that “closes” the S is in French a “trait,” thus s-trait sounds like Estrées. The alternative is that H and D are the initials of one person. One might think of Henri II on his own — Henri le deuxième — but he consistently used as his mark two counterchanged D’s joined with a crossbar rather than the H and a single D. A bookseller’s note at the front of the volume suggests Humphry Dyson (Humfrey; 1582–1633) though on what basis is unclear, other than that he was a prolific collector; it is difficult to imagine an English provenance for the volume. The other candidate is Hierosme Duvivier (1660–ca. 1720), friend of La Fontaine who ran in the circles of the Duc de Maine and the Prince de Conti.[2] Before considering this, it is worth surveying the bindings with the “HD fermé.”[3] The present item is almost the earliest known (the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon has a 1549 edition of Marot’s works, also published by Jean de Tournes: Rés. 813211), and the latest is the Zincgrefii Emblematum Ethico-politicorum of 1619. Of the ten bindings collected in the note below, five might be deemed “emblem books.” The 1561 Paradin has on its title-page the signature “Du Vivier,” which might be thought to be conclusive, but without examination (the book was sold at auction and there are no photographs or further description of the signature; it is not an uncommon surname, and there is no indication of its date) it cannot be. There is, however, a problem with Duvivier: he is nearly universally known as Jérôme (the modern French form of the Classical name Hieronymus/Ἱερώνυμος) rather than Hierosme, an earlier form of the name. He was a member of a circle called “Les Curieux,” along with Antoine Leriche, René François de La Vieuville and a fourth man; they were active collectors in the late XVIIc and early XVIIIc. Inasmuch as the HD fermé bindings so far seem to be concentrated before 1619, we might look for a binder active some eighty years before the activities of Les Curieux. The books known to have been Duvivier’s (excepting, perhaps, the 1561 Paradin) do not have this HD fermé binding. Duvivier did, however, patronize Luc-Antoine Boyet, whom we can with confidence link to the other tools used (notably those in the panels of the spine and the crowned L on the boards), as his binder. Boyet (ca. 1658–1733) was relieur du roi from 1698. The Bibliothèque nationale de France counts some forty bindings like the present item (but not with the HD fermé) and attributes them to the final decade of the XVIIc. This deserves some remark, since Louis XIII had ended his reign some fifty years earlier (1610–1643) and Anne of Austria died in 1666. The simplest explanation, of course, is that the part of the binding surrounding the HD fermé was tooled in the reign of Louis XIII, but Jean-Marc Chatelain (2003) has argued that the tools were used only in the workshop of Boyet.[4] Chatelain nevertheless doubts that HD is “Hierosme” Duvivier. To summarize the provenance evidence of the binding: the HD (whether a single person or a pair) at center of the boards is still unknown, but may have been active in either the first or last quarter of the XVIIc, and may predate the rest of the decorated binding. The Louis XIII-Anne of Austria surround likely does not date from their reign, but instead that of Louis XIV (though why is unclear), probably at the order of a late-XVIIc–early-XVIIIc antiquarian bibliophile. The next evidence of ownership is the grand armorial bookplate of Jacques-Jérémie Roussel de la Celle et de Rocquencourt (1712–1776), who served as fermier générale (chief tax-collector) to Louis XV. The next three possessors did not explicitly leave marks on the volume itself. Ambroise Firmin Didot (1790–1876) came from a great Paris dynasty of printer-publishers and amassed a vast collection at his Château la Bûcherie, where he built a free-standing library (perhaps he was responsible for the book-labels?). The present item was lot 642 at the sale of his personal collection by Firmin-Didot (the firm) in 1878. Henri Bordes (1841–1911) likely bought the book at or after the Firmin Didot sale. The scion of a Bordeaux shipping family, he was a central figure of late-XIXc French bibliophily. Bordes must not have owned the book for long (unless it was he who sold it to Firmin Didot, which is not impossible), since by 1895 it was in the collection of Robert Hoe III (1839–1909). Hoe was one of America’s greatest book-collectors, and the 1911–1912 sale of his library (the present item was lot 250 in Part II A–K (8 January 1912); that is the source for the H. Bordes provenance) is now a standard reference work. So special was the book to Hoe that he included it in an 1895 selection of 176 “Historic and Artistic Book-Bindings” from his collection (I.75), and the photographic plate of the copy is an invaluable record of condition from over 125 years ago. Our volume made its (presumably) penultimate trip across the Atlantic to enter the collection of Hubert de Ganay (1888–1974) an omnivorous collector from a long-descended Nivernais family. It was acquired at Christie’s Paris (21 November 2021, lot 44). Adams A58; Brunet III.984; Olivier-Hermal-Roton XXV, pl. 2493 (and illust. 9). [1] The standard source on the symbol, especially in the present milieu, is Claude Dulong, “Les signes cryptiques dans la correspondance d’Anne d’Autriche avec Mazarin, contribution à l’emblématique du XVIIe siècle” in Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 140.1 (1982) 61-83; 67ff. By convention, it might signify any word beginning with S (e.g., “sigillum” or “signum” (seal)) or indeed not; Dulong writes “l’s fermé prit le nom de fermesse, alias fermeté, et par extensino [sic] fidélité amoureuse” (p. 70; “the closed s was called a fermesse (firmness), otherwise fermeté (fortitude), and by extension romantic fidelity.” [2] First suggested by Isabelle de Conihout and Pascal Ract-Madoux in their catalogue for the 2002 show Reliures françaises du xviie siècle: chefs-d’œuvre du musée Condé (p. 69). This was mooted by Christie’s in the catalogue description for the present item. The attribution has been repeated by Pierre Bergé (20 June 2008, lot 61: Bruck’s Emblemata politica of 1618): “LE MYSTERE «HD» S'EPAISSIT H. D. semble avoir été un fin collectionneur de livres d’emblèmes strasbourgeois, ayant formé sa collection au début du XVIIIe siècle. Il a généralement été identifié comme étant Hierosme Duvivier (1660-vers 1720). Le même monogramme se trouve sur un autre livre d'emblèmes aussi édité à Strasbourg, préempté par la Bibliothèque nationale de France (Paris, 12 juin 2003, n° 30).” [3] A partial list of “HD fermé” bindings: the Zincgrefii Emblematum Ethico-politicorum (1619; no. 651 in the Hamilton Palace libraries catalogue); a volume mentioned by Carion in the 1881 Intermédiaire des chercheurs et curieux (col. 281; he also notes a second HD fermé included within a binding with the arms of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, but not necessarily the present item); the Joachim da Fiore volume of papal prophecies (Vaticinia) on the market with Sokol; a 1553 Rabelais in the BL (C66a7); the Bruck Emblemata politica mentioned above; a Camerarius Symbolarum & emblematum (1590–1604) offered 4 December 2016 (lot 11); Le Loyer’s 1608 Discours des spectres offered by L’intersigne (cat. no. 142, item 120); Paradin’s 1561 Devises heroiques sold by Christie’s London 15 July 2014 (lot 142); the fifth edition of Montaigne’s essays (1588) in the Tandeau de Marsac sale of 1897 (lot 151). [4] Jean-Marc Chatelain, “La politesse des livres” in La bibliothèque de l’honnête homme: livres, lecture et collections en France à l’âge classique. [Paris]: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2003; pp. 105-144; p. 43 n. 76 refers to the present volume and illustrates the BL copy, noting that they are the only two known copies with the collocation of the HD fermé and the Louis-Anne binding. Chatelain’s argument is adopted by the BnF.

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