Rhodanthes et Dosiclis amorum libri IX … — Paris 1625

Rhodanthes et Dosiclis amorum libri IX. Graece et Latine. Interprete Gilb. Gaulmino Molinensi. — Paris, Toussaint du Bray, 1625.

Editio princeps

8vo (171 x 110 mm). (32), 592 pp. A few quires toned or browned.

Contemporary calf, covers with gilt double ruled border and central arms, gilt spine with 5 raised bands with cypher in compartments, red edges, rubbed, head and tail of sine with defects, joints split.

Provenance: The arms of Jacques August de Thou and his second wife Gaspard de La Chastre on both covers; their conjoint monogram IAG on spine.

Hoffmann III 503.

As G. D. Hobson (Les reliures à la fanfare …, London 1940, p. 79) notes, the arms block is found also on bindings made for the de Thou library after its founder’s death in 1617. The Bibliotheca Thuana was not destroyed by auction after 1617, but kept together and directed by de Thou’s friends Pierre and Jacques Dupuy until 1645, and thenceforth by his son Jacques-Auguste (1609-1677), who augmented the library twice as much. The tools „would have been in the possession of de Thou himself, rather than of some particular binder.“ (Needham, … Bookbindings, p. 296). All of the three different types of de Thou’s arms were still in use after 1617.

.