Denis Dodart | Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de plantes, 1676

Denis Dodart.

Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de plantes. Paris: (Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy), de l’Imprimerie royale, 1676

FIRST EDITION, broadsheets (560 x 430mm.), engraved frontispiece of the Académie Royale des Sciences by and after Sebastien Le Clerc and printed by Goyton, printed title with armorial vignette, engraved head- and tailpiece, engraved initial, 39 very fine full-sheet engraved plates (unnumbered) after Nicolas Robert by Robert (28) and Abraham Bosse (11), including one duplicate (on pp. 120 and 122, as usual), CONTEMPORARY FRENCH RED MOROCCO WITH THE ARMS OF LOUIS XIV (Olivier 2494 fer 10, largest forma [128 x 105mm]) within a triple-fillet frame with gilt "L" monogram cornerpieces (Olivier 2494, fer 21, largest format [30 x 25 mm]), and a triple-fillet border, spine gilt in eight compartments, one lettered and the remainder gilt incorporating medium "L" monogram tool (Olivier 2494, fer 21 [25 x 20 mm]), marbled endpapers, some light soiling to margins (especially to frontispiece), occasional minor spotting, title page with blue paper residue on verso and 5mm tear, some wear to joints and spine discoloured

“One of the great books in the history of botanical illustration, where all the technical resources of engraving were utilized in presenting the plants as accurately as possible” (Hunt).

A FINE COPY IN A PRESENTATION BINDING of the first publication of these fine plates by Nicolas Robert. This book was one of the first publications of the Académie des sciences, and is a monument to the typographic, artistic and scientific skills assembled under the aegis of the Academy by Louis XIV’s far-sighted and energetic minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The engraved frontispiece shows a meeting of the Academy in the Royal Library at Versailles, with Louis XIV and Colbert present. It is the first illustration of the meeting of any learned society.

The 39 engravings represent a fraction of the 361 drawings, both in black and sanguine, prepared by Nicolas Robert and others for the project. Some other plates were engraved, "but always for limited and private distribution." The plates included here depict the plants at actual size, but because of the paper size, of necessity "sometimes in two pieces on the page, and paired with certain 'life-size' parts." Colbert even asserted "the superiority of engraving for rendering colours through gradations of black and white." The original drawings are now housed in Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris (quotations in this paragraph are from The Art of Natural History).

This volume was a prospectus for the great Histoire des plantes, which was never formally published.

PROVENANCE:

Thomas Sharp, DD (1693-1758), archdeacon of Northumberland, bookplate; thence by descent

LITERATURE:

The Art of Natural History: Botanical Illustrations … and Other Masterpieces from the Age of Exploration, ed. Heurtel & Lenoir, 48, 65; Blunt 118–119; Bridson & Wendel, Printmaking in the Service of Botany 16; Brunet II:785; De Belder sale 107; Graesse II:415; Hunt 343; Nissen BBI 502; Plesch sale 210; Pritzel 2341; Tomasi, Oak Spring Flora 168