Stout folio. ff. [8], lvi (i.e. lix), [5]; ff. [2], xxx (i.e. xlii), [2]; ff. [4], xlii, [14]; ff. [44]. Signatures: a-b4 A-J6 K4 L6; 2a-f 6 g4 h6; 3a4 b-g6 2H6; 2A6 B8 AA-EE6. Near-contemporary full soft Spanish calf. Contains bookplate of Arthur Auguste Brolemann. Midway through the third book appears the 17th-century ownership entry ‘Don Pedro de Velasco / Espanol / nacionolo / in / Salamanca,’ and there are a few other manuscript notes in the same hand, including ‘El Rey Don Enrique el quarto’ on the title and nine lines of (Spanish) verse at the end. Elegant gothic-letter typography with large and small woodcut initials, and a red and black title page with a remarkable wide historiated border involving three manneken-pis cherubs, a sage in a hanging basket, David and Goliath in full armour, and two naked handmaidens, one serving refreshments to a recumbent warrior and one dandling a snake (this is badly reproduced in J. Abelard, Les illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye de Jean Lemaire de Belges : Etude des editions, genese de l'oeuvre. Geneva, 1976, p. 139); there are three very fine full-page woodcuts at the beginning, another of the author presenting his book to a smiling monarch, three further sectional titles with impressive woodcuts incorporated, and Le Noir’s grand ‘blackamoor’ printer’s device at the end. Collected edition of all three (really five) parts of the Illustrations de Gaule, issued separately in 1511 through 1524 in smaller formats, all forbiddingly rare.

This is USTC 52382 and ‘Edition Z’ in Jacques Abelard’s magisterial bibliography of Lemaire (pp. 138-140), apparently the second of the combined assemblies or ‘editions complete,’ following his ‘Edition J’ of 1524. USTC locates copies at the British Library, Bodley (two copies, one Francis Douce’s), the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris (imperfect), and the Bibliotheque Historique de la Ville de Paris.

The Illustrations of Lemaire de Belges is celebrated on two major counts, as the historical ‘opus magnum d’un ecrivain reconnu, de l’avis meme de ses contemporains, comme le plus grand de son temps’ (Abelard), with some 36 editions and adaptations between 1511 and 1549, and as the highly infectious ‘re-forgery’ of the historical fictions of Annius of Viterbo (see Bib# 4102744/Fr# 198 in this collection).

The present copy may have figured in the inherited library of Henri Auguste Brolemann, the grandfather of the distinguished Lyonnais bibliophile Arthur Auguste Brolemann (1826–1904). The earlier Spanish provenance deserves further investigation: this Don Pedro may have been the son of Don Diego de Velasquez, a late-16th-century Spanish colonial administrator who served in Florida and Mexico. See the article on the family by J. F. Schwaller, “Nobility, Family, and Service: Menendez and his Men,” in: Florida Historical Quarterly 66 (1988), pp. 298-310, esp. pp. 302-305.

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Les Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye

Les Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troye

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