{"product_id":"the-earliest-known-printing-of-gerard-de-nevers","title":"The Earliest Known Printing of Gerard de Nevers","description":"\u003ch3\u003eThe Fourth Recorded Copy of Gibert de Montreuil’s Medieval Romance in a Superb Bauzonnet-Trautz Binding\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[Gibert de Montreuil]. \u003cem\u003eLhistoire de tres-noble [et] cheualereux pri[n]ce Gerad co[m]te de neuers [et] de rethel [et] de la vertueuse et tres chaste pri[n]cesse euriant de sauoye sa mye.\u003c\/em\u003e Paris, Hémon le Feure, 1520.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe earliest known edition of the medieval romance \u003cem\u003eGerard de Nevers\u003c\/em\u003e, printed in Paris in 1520 and surviving in only four recorded copies. This exceptionally rare volume, the very copy cited by Brunet, is preserved in a magnificent nineteenth-century jansenist binding by Bauzonnet-Trautz and boasts one of the great provenances in French bibliophily: Giraud, Solar, Firmin-Didot, Gougy, Cortlandt Bishop, and Edmée Maus.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eEdition \u0026amp; Bibliographic Information\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea–s4-8 t4 = 112 leaves.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith printer’s device on title, 11 woodcut illustrations (including one repeat), 51 floral initials on black ground, and 4 grotesque initials, all in woodcut. Small quarto (186 × 127 mm).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis edition represents the earliest known printing of \u003cem\u003eGerard de Nevers\u003c\/em\u003e, derived from the anonymous fifteenth-century prose adaptation of Gibert de Montreuil’s early thirteenth-century verse romance \u003cem\u003eRoman de la Violette\u003c\/em\u003e. Only two medieval manuscripts of the original verse text survive, and only two manuscripts of the later prose adaptation are known.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe edition was probably printed by Gilles Couteau for Hémon le Feure and was already regarded by nineteenth-century bibliographers as extraordinarily rare and difficult to obtain. Brunet cited only the present copy. Moreau knew merely three surviving examples.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePhysical Description \u0026amp; Binding\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNineteenth-century wine-red morocco binding à la janséniste by Bauzonnet-Trautz over four raised bands decorated with blind fillets. Spine compartments framed with triple blind fillets and gilt lettering in the second and third compartments. Covers with triple blind fillet borders; board edges with double gilt fillets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eParticularly magnificent are the dark blue morocco doublures divided into eleven gilt compartments and richly decorated with delicate floral and pointillé ornament. Additional marbled endleaves and entirely gilt edges over marbling throughout. The doublure signed:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Bauzonnet-Trautz”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ea form of signature used only between approximately 1840 and 1851.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeveral leaves expertly and almost invisibly remargined during a mid-nineteenth-century bibliophilic restoration. The result is a remarkable example of historicist French restoration culture, where textual rarity and luxurious rebinding combined to create an idealized Renaissance object for elite collectors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eGibert de Montreuil and the Medieval Romance Tradition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten around 1227–1229, Gibert de Montreuil’s \u003cem\u003eRoman de la Violette\u003c\/em\u003e belongs among the most charming and influential French romances of the High Middle Ages. The story centres on Gerard de Nevers and the virtuous Euriant of Savoy, whose fidelity is falsely questioned after the discovery of a violet-shaped birthmark becomes the basis of a wager. After trials involving giants, enchantment, adventure, and accusations of infidelity, the lovers are finally reunited.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe romance achieved enormous later influence. Its narrative echoes appear in Boccaccio’s \u003cem\u003eDecameron\u003c\/em\u003e, Shakespeare’s \u003cem\u003eCymbeline\u003c\/em\u003e, and ultimately Carl Maria von Weber’s opera \u003cem\u003eEuryanthe\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe eleven woodcuts of the present edition are executed in a bold and direct outline style characteristic of early sixteenth-century Parisian vernacular printing. Most striking is the large introductory woodcut, showing the author seated at his lectern surrounded by books beneath an angel unfurling a blank scroll. The image was originally adapted from a 1485 \u003cem\u003eDanse Macabre\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eGiraud, Bauzonnet-Trautz, and the Great Age of French Bibliophily\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe modern bibliophilic history of the volume is equally extraordinary.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAround the middle of the nineteenth century, the book entered the library of Charles-Joseph-Barthélemy Giraud (1802–1881), jurist, medievalist, deputy director of the Académie française, and briefly Minister of Public Instruction during the Second Republic. Giraud was particularly devoted to romances of chivalry, rare editions, and magnificent bindings — qualities perfectly united in the present volume.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor Giraud, the book was transformed through an ambitious programme of restoration and rebinding into a supreme object of French bibliophilic taste. Once elevated into this highest sphere of collecting, it never left it again.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts subsequent owners included Félix Solar, Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Lucien Gougy, Cortlandt F. Bishop, and the Swiss collector Edmée Maus, whose library was later catalogued by Paul Jammes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eProvenance\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCharles-Joseph-Barthélemy Giraud (1802–1881), his sale Paris 1855, lot 1903.\u003cbr\u003eFélix Solar (1815–1871), Paris sale 1860, lot 1887.\u003cbr\u003eAmbroise Firmin-Didot (1790–1876), Paris sale 1878, lot 595.\u003cbr\u003eLucien Gougy (1863–1931), Paris sale 1934, lot 123.\u003cbr\u003eCortlandt F. Bishop (1870–1935), New York sale 1948, lot 131.\u003cbr\u003eExhibited in \u003cem\u003eDix Siècles de Livres Français\u003c\/em\u003e, Lucerne, 1949, no. 87.\u003cbr\u003eEdmée Maus (1905–1971).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eLiterature\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot in Adams; Bechtel G-64; cf. BM STC French (only the 1526 edition); Brunet II, 1546; De Bure, \u003cem\u003eBelles-Lettres\u003c\/em\u003e II, 159, no. 3843; Ebert 8356; Graesse III, 56; Lonchamp, \u003cem\u003eFrançais\u003c\/em\u003e II, 180; Moreau 1520, 2340; Rahir 440.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see \u003cem\u003eWunderkammer\u003c\/em\u003e Catalogue 90, number 74:\u003cbr\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/issuu.com\/heribert-tenschert\/docs\/katalog_90_vol_2_web?utm_source=chatgpt.com\"\u003eWunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume II\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46837882683580,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0736\/1285\/3436\/files\/Gerard-de-Nevers-1.png?v=1779159346","url":"https:\/\/atelierzweig.com\/products\/the-earliest-known-printing-of-gerard-de-nevers","provider":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}