OFFICE of Holy Week, for use in Rome and Paris, in Latin and - Lot 69

OFFICE of Holy Week, for use in Rome and Paris, in Latin and French, with an explanation of the Church’s ceremonies … by Abbé de Bellegarde. Paris, Jacques Collombat, 1732. In-8, contemporary red morocco binding; the covers feature extensive gilt decoration formed by the alternation of two different repeated motifs—one consisting of four tulips within a four-lobed frame of three fillets, the second evoking a radiant sun with stars and dotted lines, coat of arms in the center of the covers; ribbed spine adorned in each panel with a fleur-de-lis within a dotted frame; lining and endpapers of gilded paper decorated with an embossed floral design painted in green, orange, red, yellow, and ochre; gilt edges. A superb binding adorned with a magnificent repeating design executed in fine metalwork featuring the coat of arms of Louise-Elisabeth d’Orléans, known as Mademoiselle de Montpensier (1709–1742), the fourth daughter of Regent Philippe d’Orléans and Queen of Spain. The liturgical book it covers is adorned with a beautiful frontispiece depicting the king and queen in prayer, an engraved title page bearing the coat of arms of Louis XV and the inscription *Office de la Semaine Sainte à l’usage de la Maison du Roy*, four hors-texte figures engraved on copper by Scotin after Humblot, and four vignettes at the beginning of each chapter. Very beautiful endpapers with embossed and painted floral decoration on a gilded background. A carefully repaired copy. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the short-lived Queen of Spain, had married Louis, the eldest son of Philip V—who was himself fourteen years old—in 1722, at the age of twelve. At the same time, the young Louis XV (age eleven) married the Infanta Marie-Anne-Victoire (age three), a dual marriage intended to seal the Franco-Spanish peace. The exchange of the princesses (as titled in the 2013 novel by Chantal Thomas devoted to this episode) took place on the Bidasoa River on January 9, the very spot where Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse had met sixty years earlier. After Philip V abdicated in favor of his eldest son, Louise-Elisabeth became queen on January 15, 1724. She would remain so for only seven months, until Louis’s death on August 21. A princess with a neglected upbringing, erratic behavior, and, according to her contemporaries, few charms, she failed to endear herself to her Spanish subjects, who did not hold her in high regard. Upon her return to France, where the House of Orléans had lost power following the Regent’s death, she shut herself away in the Luxembourg Palace, living as a devout recluse, and died there in 1742, at the age of 32, forgotten by all. Books by this princess, who had little interest in intellectual pursuits, are rare. Her coat of arms (OHR, 2683, plate 3), which Guigard (Volume I, p. 126) confused with those of her aunt Marie-Louise d’Orléans, wife of Charles II of Spain—and whose bookplate designs are roughly engraved—appear only on a few devotional books. Acquired by Émile Rossignol in 1956.

Schätzpreis:€3,000

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