Motte, Charles Etienne Pierre (editor).
Les tournois du roi René d’après les manuscrits et les dessins originaux de la Bibliothèque Royale. Publié par MM. (Jean-Jacques) Champollion-Figeac, pour le texte et les notes explicatives, L. J. J. Dubois, pour les dessins et les planches coloriées, Charles Motte, lithograph, editeur de l’ouvrage. Paris, chez Ch. Motte, Firmin-Didot, L. J. J. Dubois 1826 - (1827). Illustr. lithogr. and handcolour. title, lithogr. half-title, 12, 27,(3) pages with a few text-illustrations, 20 execptionally handcolour. lithogr. plates. Cont. marbled boards with with brown calf spine gilt, cont. style. Folio (695 x 540 mm). Extremeties rubbed. Quérard, France littéraire II, p. 123 “belle ouvrage“. Lipperheide TB 2. One of a very limited number of copies (ca 65 according to the a subscriber’s list, not bound-in in our copy). Text pages foxed, plates on heavy paper clean and fresh. A beautifully illustrated and handcoloured book on medieval tournaments after a manuscript commissioned by René d’Anjou and kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Formerly, the manuscript was regarded as directly inspired by a series of tournaments held at the Anjou court at Nancy, Saumur and Tarascon between 1445 and 1450, but it is now considered somewhat younger, dating to the 1460s, not least because the text makes several critical allusions to the Traité des anciens et nouveaux tournois written by Antoine de la Sale in 1459. It was most likely completed before 1471, as an inventory of Angers castle in 1471/2 mentions a Cayez de papier en grant volume, ouquel est le commencement d'un tournoy, which has been identified with this manuscript. The manuscript later came into possession of Marie of Luxembourg (d. 1546) and later again of Louis Nicolas Fouquet (d. 1705), then passing to Louis François de Bourbon-Conti and finally to Louis-César de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière who in 1766 sold it to the Royal Library of Louis XV. The description given in the book is different from that of the pas d’armes held at Razilly and Saumur; conspicuously absent are the allegorical and chivalresque ornamentations that were in vogue at the time. René instead emphasizes he is reporting on ancient tournament customs of France, Germany and the Low Countries, combining them in a new suggestion on how to hold a tournament. The tournament described is a melee fought by two sides. It was commissioned in the 1460s, and the manuscript kept in the Bibliotheque Nationale is no doubt the original, with illustrations attributed to Barthelemy d’Eyck (Eyck's are line drawings, possibly intended as preparatory only, which were later coloured either by him or by another artist). There are twenty-six full and double page illustrations. COPAC: BL London; National Art Library; OCLC: Getty Research, Houghton, Morgan Library.
EUR 4800.–