Chrétien de Troyes: Master of the French Medieval Romance

At the heart of this selection, which pulled in a total of €263,956, were some very old texts from the first quarter of the 13th century (c. 1220), which took first place at €72,500 when it was preempted by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF, French National Library) . They consisted of 16 famous manuscript fragments in different formats (on average, pages of 28 x 20 cm/11 x 7.9 in), from a single codex containing four major works by Chrétien de Troyes. The art of this author of chivalric romances (c. 1135-1183) is illustrated here by parts of Érec et Énide, Cligès, Yvain and Perceval. Known as the "Annonay Manuscript", this unique set of medieval parchment pages was discovered in 1933. They had been used to bind registers in a notary's office… The next lot was an 1857 album of photographs by Gustave Le Gray entitled Souvenirs du camp de Châlons (Memories of the Camp of Châlons). This unique memento given by Napoleon III to General Camou contains 34 vintage albumen prints from wet collodion negatives, with the photographer's stamp. They feature details of major maneuvers, the bivouacs of the Zouaves and portraits of the generals present: all assets that led to a result of €42,500. Another piece of early photography's fascinating history came in the shape of a striking plate (34 x 26.5 cm/13.4 x 10.4 in): a heliography of 1826, taken from the work of Louis-Désiré Blanquart-Evrard (1802-1872), La photographie, ses origines, ses progrès, ses transformations ("Photography: its Origins, Advances and Transformations") (L. Danel in Lille, 1870). It garnered €25,625.