THE MAYOR OF BELGIUM (John). The illustrations... Lot 281

THE MAYOR OF BELGIUM (John). The illustrations of Gaul and singularity of Troye. Auec both epistres de Lamant Uert. The second reading of the illustrations of Gaul and the singularity of Troyes. The third binding of the illustrations of Gaul: entitled Frâce oriêtalle et occidentalle. The traicte of the difference between the Scisms and the Concilles de leglise. And of its preeminence and utulity of the councils of the saicte Gallicane church. With the story and not fabulous uraye of Prince Syach Ysmail dit Sophy. And the exceptionconduyt that the Souldan yielded to the Francoys to frequent the Holy Land. The King's track has Hector of Troyes and no other works of art worthy of a wish. All this is written by Jehan the Mayor of Belgium, indexer and historiographer of the king. Paris, Francoys Regnault, 1528. Large in-4 (266 x 191 mm), full chamois leather (contemporary binding). 5 ff.n.ch., LXV ff.ch., 1 ff.bl., XLVI ff.ch., 6 ff.n.ch., XLI ff.ch., 1 ff.bl., 29 ff.n.ch., 1 ff.bl., 14 ff.n.ch. Important woodcut illustration: it consists of a general title in red and black, 4 black report titles with the mark of François Regnault, 68 in-text figures (some full-page) and countless letters. Text in gothic printing on two columns. This edition was sometimes announced without a date, because indeed it has neither at the beginning nor at the end of the volume, but only at the end of the first and third parts. (Brunet III, 963; Tchemerzine IV, 149.) Major work of the last of the great rhetoricians, Jean Lemaire (1473 - 1515), native of the region of Bavay in Belgian Hainaut. He was for a long time in the service of Margaret of Austria before becoming linked around 1509 with Queen Anne of Brittany. It is in this turbulent context that the Illustrations of Gaul appears, a committed work in which the author uses the myth of the Trojan origin of the houses of Austria and France to plead for their rapprochement.