MAROLLES, Michel de MAROLLES ABBE DE VILLELOIN.Tableaux... Lot 30

MAROLLES, Michel de MAROLLES ABBE DE VILLELOIN.Tableaux du Temple des Muses tirez du cabinet de feu M. Favereau, Conseiller du Roy en la Cour des Aydes, et gravez en tailles-douces par les meilleurs Maistres de son temps, pour représenter les Vertus et les Vices, sur les plus illustres fables de l'Antiquité.avec les descriptions, remarques et annotations de M. Michel de Marolles, abbé de Villeloin. Paris, Nicolas L'Anglois, 1655. 2 volumes In-folio, one volume of text title-frontispice, title, (4 ff), portrait of Favereau, (5 ff), 477 pages, (4 ff). and one volume of 58 plates engraved on copper by Boemaert and Mathan after drawings by Abraham van Diepenbeck and Pierre Brebiette. Full contemporary calf. First edition of one of the most beautiful books of the 17th century. The illustration includes an allegorical frontispiece, a portrait of Favereau and 58 magnificent mythological pictures representing the Virtues and Vices, on the most illustrious fables of Antiquity, by Abraham van Diepenbeke and Pierre Brebiette, engraved in intaglio by Bloemaert and Mathan. The edition was shared between the booksellers Mariette, Sommaville and Langlois. "The Paintings of Philostratus and those of the Temple of the Muses are like two monuments to the glory of Paganism ...The second does not seem to have had the same success as the first. Yet the engravings are even more careful... All these illustrations are among the best of the time". (Duportal, Etude sur les livres à figure édités en France de 1601 à 1660, pages 260261. Ex-libris on vignette stuck on the back cover of KUHNHOLTZ- -LORDAT by (Felix) DUPONT 1888-1965 is an agricultural engineer (INA Paris), doctor of science and corresponding member of the Institute, professor of botany at the École nationale supérieure agronomique de Montpellier. Kuhnholtz-Lordat can be considered as one of the founding fathers of "fire-ecology" and "global change ecology".