DENIS (Maurice). - PETITES FLEURS DE SAINT FRANÇOIS... Lot 10

DENIS (Maurice). - PETITES FLEURS DE SAINT FRANÇOIS D'ASSISE. Paris, Jacques Beltrand, 1913. In-folio, (26 or 18 blanks, the justification, 3 blanks, the faux-title, one blank, the title, one blank)-vi-(2 of which the second blank)-256-(14) pp, stiff parchment, smooth spine, parchment lining; important pyrographed, painted and varnished decoration: pampers adorning the spine and framing the boards and back covers, scene depicting St. Francis surrounded by birds in the center of the upper board, semis of flowers in the center of the lower board; parchment endpapers, covers and spine preserved, gilt edges; brown morocco spine folder (with gilt title "Fioretti"), case; jaws split, case a little worn (André Mare 1914). ORIGINAL EDITION OF THIS FRENCH TRANSLATION by the art historian and Italianist André Pératé. THE "FIORETTI". This famous anthology of the acts of St. Francis of Assisi was first written in Latin in the 13th century (Actus beati Francisci et sociorum ejus) by two successive anonymous friars minor, from the "spiritual" movement, probably in the convent of Sofiano in the Ancona area, before being translated into Tuscan before the end of the following century ("Fioretti di san Francesco"), which was widely distributed and truly acquired the status of a spiritual manual. EDITION OF ONLY 120 COPIES ON VERGE DE HOLLANDE. FIRST EDITION OF THE ENGRAVED BOOKS AFTER MAURICE DENIS by Jacques Beltrand and his brothers, that is to say: a title-frontispiece out of text, a frame on each page, 74 historiated compositions, numerous typographical ornaments including 72 initials, and about fifteen paragraph marks in repetitions. A PIONEER OF THE ART DECO BINDING. "The decorator André Mare (1885-1932), who always considered himself a painter, had, since 1909, taken the habit of exhibiting his paintings with his bindings. These, generally with long back and covered with parchment, were the support of drawings pyrographed, then painted and varnished that he signed with his hand, like a painting. Even at the height of the success of the Compagnie des arts français (1919-1927), which he had founded with Louis Süe, he continued to present his bindings - he made about a hundred - in his gallery in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré [...]. Before Pierre Legrain was discovered, they were the only ones that corresponded to the new trends that would triumph at the 1925 exhibition. However, unlike the bindings of Legrain and his emulators, Mare's creations had nothing abstract or geometrical: figurative, the drawing is generally rounded and clear, vigorous and naive, raised with frank colors; the aspect is at the same time rustic by the material and refined by the bright transparencies that allows the employed process " (Antoine Coron, in Des livres rares depuis l'invention de l'imprimerie, Paris, BnF, 1998, p. 285).