Thevet, Des vrais pourtraits et vies, Paris, 1584, contemporary brown calf with white calf inlaid gilt centrepiece, the Macclesfield copy

THEVET, ANDRÉ. Des vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins et payens. Paris: Widow of Jacques Kerver (Blanche Marentin) & Guillaume Chaudière, 31 August 1584

THE MACCLESFIELD COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS FINE COLLECTION OF ENGRAVED PORTRAITS covering a wide range of subjects: classical authors, Church Fathers, medieval scholars, contemporary statesmen, scientists, explorers and rulers. Many of the engravings are loosely based on the woodcut portraits used in Thevet's earlier work La cosmographie universelle of 1575. In his preface to the present work, Thevet writes at some length about the commissioning of the engravings (he sought the best engravers from Flanders), and the privilege (on c4 verso) is much more concerned with the engravings than the text. The work was re-published in an eight-volume 12mo set, with reduced copies of the portraits in 1670-1671. The present copy is in a splendid contemporary binding, similar to Genevan bindings, particularly with regard to the female term on the spine. A similar female term appears on the following bindings:

i) Richard Strein von Schwartzenau, Gentium et familiarum Romanorum stemmata (Geneva: Henri Estienne, 1559), in Schunke, Einbände der Palatina (1962), plate CLXIV

ii) New Testament, Greek and Latin (Geneva: Henri Estienne, 1565), the J.R. Abbey sale in these rooms, 21 June 1965, lot 502 (now in the British Library, Henry Davis Gift)

iii) Bible, French (Geneva: François Estienne, 1567), in R. Hoe, Historic and Artistic Bookbindings (1895), no. 44

These three bindings are Genevan, and the first two have been attributed to the Genevan "King's Binder" by Ilse Schunke and Mirjam Foot respectively. They are, however, several years earlier than the Thevet binding. Contacts between Geneva and Lyon were close, and the nearest comparison with the jester's heads on this volume is to be found on the extraordinary binding of a Bible printed in Paris in 1566, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which Jean Toulet considers Lyonese (J. Toulet, "L'école lyonnaise de reliure" in Le siècle d'or de l'imprimerie lyonnaise, Paris 1972, fig. 142). The tools on the Thevet cannot be linked with those used by known Genevan workshops, and since the first owner was Lyonese, the binding could well be of Lyonese origin.