The First Arthurian Romance Written by an Italian, in a Magnificent Lortic Binding
Gyron le Courtoys. Auecques la deuise des armes de tous les cheualiers de la table ronde. Paris, [Antoine Couteau(?) for] Antoine Vérard, circa 1501–1503.
One of the great early printed Arthurian romances, issued by Antoine Vérard in Paris around 1503 and illustrated with large dramatic woodcuts depicting the world of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.
The edition is of the utmost rarity. Already Brunet described it as “la plus belle et la plus recherchée,” noting that complete copies are exceptionally difficult to find. Modern scholarship records only a handful of surviving examples. The present copy belonged to the great nineteenth-century publisher and bibliophile Ambroise Firmin-Didot and was later magnificently restored and rebound by the celebrated Parisian binder Marcellin Lortic.
Edition & Bibliographic Information
Large folio (311 × 206 mm), printed throughout in double columns in Bastarda type with paragraph marks.
Illustrated with six large woodcuts, two supplied in early facsimile, together with numerous grotesque woodcut initials and Lombard initials throughout. The final page bears Vérard’s publisher’s device.
Bound in an extraordinary nineteenth-century red morocco binding by Marcellin Lortic, signed on the inner doublure. The decoration consciously evokes sixteenth-century Grolier-style geometrical strapwork bindings associated with Jean Picard and the great French Renaissance ateliers. Blue morocco doublures, gilt edges, and elaborate interlaced tooling complete one of the most visually striking historicist bindings of the nineteenth century.
Rustichello da Pisa and the Arthurian Tradition
The text itself occupies a fascinating place in medieval literary history.
Its author, Rustichello da Pisa, is best known today as the collaborator who recorded Marco Polo’s travels during their imprisonment together in Genoa. Yet before that, Rustichello had travelled through France and England and encountered the flourishing Arthurian traditions surrounding the courtly world of King Arthur.
Drawing on earlier material associated with Hélie de Borron and the Anglo-French Arthurian tradition, Rustichello composed what is regarded as the earliest Arthurian romance written by an Italian author. The adventures of Gyron le Courtoys formed part of this larger narrative cycle surrounding the knights of the Round Table.
By the time Vérard printed the text around 1500, however, the medieval world that had produced such ideals of knighthood had already disappeared. Europe had entered the age of artillery, professional infantry, and centralized monarchies. The Arthurian romances therefore already carried a nostalgic historical aura even for Renaissance readers themselves.
Antoine Vérard and the Transition from Manuscript to Print
Few publishers embodied the transition from manuscript culture to print more fully than Antoine Vérard.
His editions deliberately retained the visual richness and ceremonial atmosphere of illuminated manuscripts. The present Gyron le Courtoys combines dense black-letter typography with monumental woodcuts and decorative initials in a way that still feels deeply rooted in late medieval book culture.
The six large woodcuts are among the edition’s greatest attractions. Their dramatic compositions transform Arthurian legend into the visual language of late fifteenth-century France, much as contemporary romances and tapestries translated chivalric memory into courtly spectacle.
Ambroise Firmin-Didot and Marcellin Lortic
The nineteenth-century history of the present copy is itself remarkable.
The first traceable owner is Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1810–1876), among the most important French publishers, philologists, and bibliophiles of the nineteenth century. His celebrated collection was dispersed in Paris shortly after his death, where the present volume appeared in the first Firmin-Didot sale in June 1878.
Shortly before that sale, the book was entrusted to Marcellin Lortic, “one of the most celebrated binders of his age.” Lortic replaced the missing title leaf and final leaf of the first gathering in extremely accomplished facsimile, carefully cleaned and restored the textblock, and enclosed the volume in a sumptuous red morocco binding inspired by French Renaissance Grolier bindings of the 1540s.
The result perfectly reflects the nineteenth century’s rediscovery of the Middle Ages. As contemporaries observed of Lortic, he consistently created “du nouveau avec l’ancien” — something new from the old.
Provenance
Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1810–1876), his Paris sale, 6–15 June 1878, number 573. Later L. Gougy sale I, 1934, number 128.
Literature
Bechtel G-406; BM STC French 215; Brunet II, 1840; Claudin II, 485; Ebert 9150; Goff G-736; Graesse III, 190f.; Hain 8340; Macfarlane, Vérard 139; Pellechet 314.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 32a:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
