LUCAIN. Lot n° 20

Lucan, Suetoine et Saluste en françois. Paris, Pierre Le Rouge for Antoine Vérard, 1490. folio, skin turned over on wooden boards, vellum spine with exposed nerves, clasps, brown half-maroquin slipcase (period binding). First edition. This work is not a translation of Lucan, Suetonius and Sallustus, but an original Roman history taken from the three Latin historians. Antoine Vérard published a second edition in 1500. One of the most beautiful productions of the presses of Pierre Le Rouge, with the Orose and the Seneca published the following year. This remarkable two-column gothic printing is decorated with large initials with figures on the first three leaves. The text is illustrated with six different woodcuts depicting scenes of battles, sieges and knightly combat, as well as the author at his lectern, repeated many times throughout the work. Each page decorated with one of these woodcuts also includes a marginal border, repeating four woodcuts with a black background depicting characters and four woodcuts with grotesques and birds. This precious French incunabulum is extremely rare. The ISTC lists only seven copies, two of which are incomplete, namely: three in France (BnF, Musée Condé and Angers), two in Great Britain (Oxford and Cambridge), and two in the United States (Morgan Library and Newberry Library). A copy cited by Bechtel, with good margins (38,5 x 27 cm), in a contemporary binding. From the library of Charles-Louis Fière (1938, III, n°46). Missing ff. a1-a2, replaced in facsimile; ff. a3, a6-a8 from another copy, rubricated and slightly shorter margins; marginal repair at foot of ff. a4-a5. Binding skilfully restored, skin missing, a few scattered stains and wormholes. ISTC il00312000 - Bechtel L-331 (quoted ex.) - Macfarlane n°12 - Hain 10244 - Goff L-312 - CIBN L-224 - GW M1887710 - Claudin, I, 479.