Albert UDERZO (1927-2020) Lot n° 98

■ λ Asterix - Caesar's Gift India ink on paper for the first album board. Dedicated, 43.8x34.7 cm. Dargaud, 1974. Published in 1974, Caesar's Gift is the first Asterix album that was not pre-published in Pilote magazine, but in the daily newspaper Le Monde as a summer serial. Always in tune with the times and quick to broach French society, the authors surf on the presidential race between Giscard d'Estaing and Mitterrand, imagining a political duel between Abraracourcix and a newcomer to the famous village. This arrival follows Caesar's new scheme: offering the Asterix village to a greedy veteran. In this very first instalment of the album, we find the effectiveness of René Goscinny's role-playing, and above all the many references he constantly used in the series' scenarios. While the Latin expression is taken from the Bible, the song refers to a verse from the bawdy song "Ils ont des chapeaux rond" where the sergeant is cleverly replaced by a centurion, then a decurion. Goscinny accentuates this great cultural gap by naming the veteran Romeo and Juliet after a Shakespearean hero from the play Romeo and Juliet. Albert Uderzo explained: "I still remember my fits of laughter when I discovered René's screenplay" As usual, the cartoonist is not to be outdone. His superb first box pays homage both to the great painters and to the architecture of Rome. He also plays on the shadows and the light projected by the Moon to set the atmosphere of the story. These differences in light and volume are accentuated by the effects of hatching and cross-hatching. Finally, the light emanating from the porch is underlined by the strokes focused on the adjacent walls: an expert technique in the service of humour! With this wide shot, Uderzo directly sets the scene: the magnificence of Rome compared to the rest of the ancient world, but also the late hour, which leads to the delirious scene that follows. The lettering fully participates in the hum