Very rare first Viennese edition, illustrated with 366 figures by Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner. Remarkable baroque iconography. Only one copy located in electronic library catalogues at Strasbourg, one copy at Cambridge and another at Oxford.
Contemporary half brown sheep bindings, spines with raised bands decorated with fillets, green sheep title and volume labels. Skilful restorations to joints and headcaps. Rubbing to speckled paper boards. Although pagination is continuous across the four volumes and collation appears complete, we note the absence of a title page to the third part (binder's oversight?).
Engraved bookplate Froissart, second manuscript bookplate Augustin Sotteau.
Second edition, after the first published in 1675.
Contemporary flexible vellum binding. Smooth spine with handwritten title, date and place at foot. Head crushed. Soiling and stains. Manuscript ownership inscription on title page. Good copy.
Some years earlier, the author had published a letter with the same title: La génération de l'homme par le moyen des oeufs. A response was soon circulated that mocked and ridiculed the author, even accusing him of blasphemy. Houppeville produced his defense in 1676 in the form of a dialogue between three people: one character defending the thesis of generation through eggs, an arbitrator questioning, and a third character supporting the falsity of this thesis. Through this skillful rhetorical dispute, the author was able to express his thesis against his anonymous contradictory who had sullied his reputation, a thesis which is none other than that animals and man are formed in an egg. The book makes numerous references to physicians of antiquity.
First edition of the French translation by Marie Canavaggia, one of 26 numbered copies on pur-fil paper, only deluxe copies ("tirage de tête").
Nice copy.
First edition.
Worn contemporary half brown sheep binding. Spine with raised bands and ornament. Beige morocco title label. Head torn away with first compartment partly lacking. Tail trimmed. Upper joint cracked, lower joint split with losses. Corners cut. Trace of label on second compartment.
Two large sections divide this work. The first catalogs and describes the paintings present in the churches and castles from Lille to Antwerp, and this for all the cities of Flanders (Dunkirk, Brussels, Bruges...). The second part consists of biographies of famous painters of Flanders: Rubens, Van Dyck, Otto Van Veen, Jordaens, Van Cleef, Van Oost, etc.
One of the most magnificent letters by Fernand Léger
A fabulous handwritten letter by the painter Fernand Léger, written on the front line during the Battle of Argonne, addressed to the Parisian art trader Adolphe Basler.
92 lines in black ink, four pages on a double leaf, dated 28 May 1915 by Léger.
The handwritten letter is presented with a half forest green morocco chemise, green paper boards with a stylised motif, endpapers lined with green lamb, slip case lined with the same morocco, the piece is signed by Goy & Vilaine.
The letter was chosen for Cécile Guilbert's anthology, Les Plus Belles Lettres manuscrites de Voltaire à Édith Piaf, Robert Laffont, 2014.
First edition, one of 500 copies on ordinary paper.
Spine sunned, small tears and two marginal lacks on the covers, a small dampstain to head of first cover, occasional foxing as usual.
Retaining its advertising band.
Handsome autograph inscription signed by René Char to Alexei Remizov : "... dont la rencontre est mieux qu'un moment d'émotion".
