CHAPELAIN, jean Lot n° 18

La Pucelle ou la France délivrée, heroic poem in twelve songs. Paris, Augustin Courbé, 1656. Folio, (22) folio, 522 pp., (6) folio, front, 2 portraits and 12 figures, fawn calf marbled on the back, decorated ribbed back, double gilt thread on the plates, beginnings of split at the upper hinge, restored headdresses. BRUNET I, 1794. TCH III, 239. OF BACKER, II, 808. CANIVET n°90. Original edition. Front. engraved by Abraham Bosse and 2 portraits engraved by Robert Nanteuil: Henri d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville to whom the work is dedicated, according to Philippe de Champaigne; the Chaplain's portrait executed on the spot. The great work of Chapelain de l'Académie française, while not a success in literary terms, is nonetheless a success in graphic terms. Twelve plates engraved by Abraham Bosse after drawings by Claude Vignon, both continuous collaborators. Canivet (p. 45) notes on this illustration that it is "all imprint of a romanticism before its time that characterizes Vignon's art. On the subject of the marvelous Christian: "The struggle of angels and demons is constantly present in the illustration of the Virgin; here Vignon takes the position of treating this war in the upper register of the plate. And while the fighting of the humans takes place on the Loire, in Paris, or elsewhere, an apocalyptic monster and angels are grappling in stormy skies.'' (Canivet, p. 44)