Doré, Limage de vertu, Paris, 1540, Parisian tan calf, L'Angelier publisher's binding presented to Anne Gaultier

DORÉ, PIERRE. Limage de vertu demonstrant la perfection & saincte vie de la bienheuree vierge Marie mere de dieu, parles escriptures, tant de l’ancie que du nouveau testament. Paris: [Jean de Broilly, Jérôme de Gourmont & Pierre Vidoue], 1540

THE FIRST SURVEY OF ITALIAN PRINTED BOOKS.FIRST EDITION IN A PUBLISHER'S BINDING FOR CHARLES L'ANGELIER, PRESENTED AS A GIFT TO ANNE GAULTIER.

The present volume has fascinating provenance relating to an early modern female owner. Gilt lettering added to the binding at a later stage declares that it was presented as a gift to the nun Anne Gaultier, with an inscription next to the privilege leaf revealing that it was subsequently bequeathed by Gaultier to her convent: "Ce livre vient de ma Sor Anne Gaultier et le donne au couvent ma dame et deffant de toute sa puissance que personne ne se preigne son particulier".

Pierre Doré (c. 1500-1569) wrote a large number of works on devotion, most of them at the request of and for aristocratic women. Limage de vertu, according to Doré the first life of Mary in French, was written "à l’instâce d’une dévote dame," namely Antoinette de Bourbon, duchesse de Guise (wife of Claude de Lorraine), whose confessor he was. A copy of this edition in the Wittock sale (Christie’s 2004, lot 56) was bound by the Pecking Crow Binder for François I; according to tradition (see the Baron Lucien Double catalogue, 1890), it had been presented to Antoinette de Bourbon by the author, who in turn gave it to the King. Henri Herluison assumed the lettering on binding of the present copy (I give it to you from my whole heart) to be evidence of authorial presentation to Anne Gaultier. Another volume belonging to Anne Gaultier with identical lettering and also bearing the L’Angelier device covers a copy of Pierre Doré’s Le College de sapience (Paris 1539). Placed in it is a more explicit donation inscription, addressed to Antoinette de Lorraine, elder daughter of Antoinette de Bourbon, and Abbess of the Benedictine nunnery Notre-Dame de Faremoutiers. It is thus possible that the “couvent ma dame” to which Anne gave her Limage de vertu was Faremoutiers Abbey.

At least twenty-nine bindings have been identified with the gilt device of Charles L'Angelier (Langelier; 1502-1563), the Parisian publisher. Léon Gruel coined the term "reliure commerciale" to describe these and similar bindings, bearing the names or devices of publishers and printers, and proposed that most, or all, of Charles and Arnoul L'Angelier's bindings were bound in this manner before they were sold, and that the bindings were executed in the brothers' shop. This contention has since generated scholarly debate, but the explanation upheld to this day, first proposed by E.P. Goldschmidt, is that L'Angelier sold books both in sheets and ready-bound, with some of the latter placed in bindings decorated by his device. Goldschmidt's theory accounts for the fact that multiple copies of the same work may be found with a L'Angelier device on their covers, and why a L'Angelier device is sometimes found on books printed by others (and, in one documented case, on a book printed before the brothers were admitted to the guild as booksellers). The L'Angelier device has been found on bindings of books printed between 1534 and 1556.

For other L'Angelier publisher's bindings in the sale, see lots 1733 (Justinian I) and 1763-1764 (Martial D'Auvergne).