herbal france (1 résultats)

Hardcover. Etat : Very good. First. Paris: Jehan Janot, [ca. 1521]. Small quarto (7" x 4 7/8", 178mm x 125mm). [Full collation available.] With some 300 woodcuts integral to the text, as well as Lombardic and inhabited initials. Title printed red-and-black. Collated complete (same number of leaves, signed identically except with b-e^4 f^8 g-k^4 for our b-e^4 g^4 h-i^8 k^4) against BnF ACQ 84-7049. Bound by Lobstein-Laurenchet (signed to the upper edge of the verso of the first free end-paper) in modern olive-green morocco with yapp edges. On the voards, a double blind fillet border. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to the second panel. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. Very faint rubbing to the extremities. Washed. Quires g and h re-margined; h8 with the running title partially supplied in manuscript. Scattered very faint early marginalia and lining. Book-label of Jean Bonna on the recto of the first binder's blank (from his sale, Christie's 16 June 2015, lot 24). The intellectual history of early herbals is both complicated and quite straightforward: most are compendia or translations of a limited sets of Classical and medieval works on the properties -- especially the medicinal properties -- of plants. The title cites several: the tenth- and eleventh-century Persian polymaths Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Rasis (Razi, Rhazes); Constantinus Africanus the eleventh-century monk who introduced their work to Europe; Isaac Israeli, a Jewish Neoplatonist and physician; Matthaeus Platearius of Salerno, likely the author of a Latin treatise on medicinal plants called Circa Instans; and Hippocrates (ypocras), the fifth-century BC doctor and "father of medicine." The popularity of the subject in the late medieval period carried over into the era of incunables, and a great many herbals were printed; the first account of the herbal in French (Grant -- i.e. Grand -- Herbier, also called the Arbolayre) is as early as 1480, published by the Paris bookseller Pierre le Caron. His stock was transferred to Nyverd, who circulated it to a variety of publishers (including Janot (Jehannot)) from ca. 1520-1540; the present copy is at the very early end of this. Because so many hands were involved, very rarely do copies align exactly; our has only one comparandum: BnF ACQ 84-7049 (whose collation is nearly idential). Particularly lovely in this edition is the profusion of woodcuts in a sparse, almost abstracted style. These indicate rather than illustrate the various species, but are nonetheless crucial to early taxonomy. The present copy was conserved in the twentieth century (including the fine Lobstein-Laurenchet binding), perhaps by the only owner whose ownership mark remains: Jean Bonna, the renowned collector of Old Master drawings. Bonna's first passion, however, was early French first editions (especially illustrated), and he had a nonpareil collection of them. It is therefore difficult to imagine a superior provenance for the volume. Brunet I.377; Choulant Naturgeschichte 6; Nissen BBI 2332; Pritzel 10762; cf. Renouard 474.