Lot n° 115
Estimation :
80000 - 120000
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GASTON III, Count of Foix, known as PHÉBUS - Lot 115
GASTON III, Count of Foix, known as PHÉBUS
Phebus des Deduitz de la chasse des bees sauvaiges et des oyseaulx de proye
Paris, Jehan Trepperel, [between 1507 and 1511].
REMARKABLE EXEMPLAIRE BY FERNAND COLOMB (1488-1559): CHRISTOPHE COLOMB'S SON WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST BIBLIOPHILES OF THE XVIth CENTURY.
FORMER COLLECTIONS OF ERNEST DAGUIN AND JEAN BLONDELET.
"AS RARE AS THE FIRST EDITION, OR RARER, AND A BEAUTIFUL BOOK" (Schwerdt).
Second edition, published a few months after the original. Large woodcut on title page, printer's mark on last leaf, numerous woodcut initials. Gothic font, two-column text, 46 lines per page.
folio (264 x 185mm)
COLLATION: a-t6 u6 : 118 leaves
CONTENTS: a1r: title, a2r: prologue, a3v: table, a5: text, i2v: le Roman des deduis, by Gace de la Buigne, u6r: colophon, u6v: printer's mark
ILLUSTRATION: full-page woodcut for the title and 32 woodcuts in the text reproducing those of Vérard's edition
BINDING SIGNED BY CUZIN. Brown morocco, boards entirely decorated with cold decoration, titling in gilt lettering, ribbed spine, chased edges. Case
PROVENANCE: Fernand Colomb (1488-1559) -- Ernest Daguin (1817-1892; Paris, 1905, lot 1212, 7.645 FF: "Superbe exemplaire provenant de la bibliothèque de Fernand Colomb") -- Jean Blondelet (faded mark in the inner margin of the lower cover)
The Livre de Chasse by Gaston Phébus (1331-1391) is, after the Livre du Roy Modus, "the oldest major treatise on hunting written in French. Composed around 1370, it was, along with Le Roy Modus, the only hunting treatise that our ancestors could consult for almost two centuries, until the arrival of Du Fouilloux" (Thiébaud). He contributed to the constitution of the French language, both poetically, politically and metaphysically, since the definition of a common language (still in use today) fostered an art of living together in a verticality that brought us closer to God: "bon veneur ne peult avoir nuls des septs pechez mortelz".
"I, Gaston [...] took special delight in three things: arms, love and hunting. And as for the first two, there have been far better masters than I, for far better knights have been than I am, and many people have had more beautiful adventures of love than I have, it would be foolish for me to speak of them. I therefore neglect these two offices of arms and love, because those who wish to follow them properly will learn more from them in fact than I could say in words; and this is why I will keep silent about them. It is of the third office, of which I doubt I have had any master, however vain it may seem, that I would like to speak, that is, hunting" (leaflet A2).
Thiébaud knew of only four or five copies of this edition. The one belonging to Marcel Jeanson is now in a well-known Touraine collection.
Fernand Colombus (1488-1559), second son of Christopher Columbus, accompanied his father on his fourth and final voyage (1502-1504) to the New World when he was just fourteen years old. They reached the Isthmus of Panama, but were stranded for a year on their return to the island of Jamaica due to damage. Christopher Columbus, weakened, died in 1506. Fernand Columbus made two more voyages to the New World, staying in Rome and criss-crossing northern Europe in the wake of Charles V, whom he advised with his knowledge of geography, history and cosmography. At the end of his life, he founded a school of mathematics and navigation in Seville, and devoted himself entirely to the universal library he had begun to build up in the 1520s, maintaining an abundant correspondence with the greatest booksellers and humanists of his time, including Erasmus. His library already contained over 15,000 works when, on the death of Fernand Colomb, it was transferred to Seville Cathedral, where it is still housed (albeit only in part) under the name of Biblioteca Colombina. Columbus had a catalog of his library (entitled Libros de los Epitomes (Book of Condenses)) drawn up as early as 1523. One of the two volumes of this catalog was recently found in the Copenhagen library.
The 1905 Daguin sale catalog, under no. 1212, describes this copy of the Phebus bound by Cuzin as "Superb copy from the library of Fernand Colomb". Unfortunately, the notice does not say on which index, which may have disappeared by the time the volume was bound by Cuzin, this statement is based. But in one of the inventories of Columbus's books drawn up during his lifetime, known as Abecedarium B, an e
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