Vallet / Robin Jardin Du Roy - “THE FIRST IMPORTANT FLORILEGIUM”

“THE FIRST IMPORTANT FLORILEGIUM” VALLET, Pierre (ca. 1575–ca. 1657) and Jean ROBIN (1550–1629). Le Jardin du Roy tres chrestien Henry·IV· Roy de France et de Navarre dedie a la Royne. [Paris: Pierre Vallet,] 1608. First edition. Here is what AI says it’s worth: $44,836. Folio (13 5/8” x 9 ¼”, 346mm x 234mm): ã2 ẽ2 [$1 signed]. With an etched-engraved title-page, 2 etched-engraved portraits and 73 etched-engraved plates. Bound in XVIIIc speckled calf (rebacked) with a double fillet border. On the spine, five raised bands with a floral gilt roll. In the panels, gilt rosette centerpieces with gilt ornaments top-and-bottom, all within a double gilt fillet border. Title gilt to red morocco in the second panel. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Rebacked. Boards a little bit splayed. A little rubbing to the fore-corners. Some wear to the lower edges of the first eight leaves, not affecting text or images. From the fifteenth plate, foliation in early ink manuscript to the upper fore-corner. On the eleventh plate, an early ink addition to the caption of the plate. The occasional spot but without foxing or any but the mildest tanning. With excellent margins (some half an inch taller than the Hunt copy), including many deckled edges. A lovely volume. On the lower edge of the title-page, an ink ownership inscription: “Ex bibliotheca H[ospita]l.is Lug[du]nis Catholicae Anno 1713” (General Almshouse (l’Aumône générale) of Lyon). Pierre Vallet (ca. 1575–ca. 1657) styles himself “brodeur ordinaire du roy,” i.e., the court embroiderer. The book is dedicated to the queen (la Royne), Marie de’ Medici, and is essentially a pattern-book for floral embroidery, which had become fashionable at court due largely to the queen. Vallet collaborated with Jean Robin (1550–1629; his is the second portrait), who directed the gardens at the Louvre and also maintained a small garden of rare plants on the western end of the Île de la Cité, to gather this florilegium (the Latin equivalent of Greek anthology, a selection of flowers). Vallet drew and etched-engraved the plates, which are “treated with complete naturalism and botanical accuracy” (Blunt 90; Blunt also anointed the book “the first important florilegium,” ibid., 89). Because of the beauty and fidelity of its plates, the book was long used as a pattern-book for artists in various media. Indeed, it was re-issued in 1623 (changed to Loys XIII), that edition being considerably commoner. The Aumône générale of Lyon, just beside the Hôtel-Dieu (where Rabelais was a doctor), was established in the 1530’s and settled in its present location in the mid-XVIIc. It had extensive gardens, and it was presumably their superintendent who used the present volume as a reference. Blunt, The Art of Botanical Illustration 89-91; Hunt 187; Nissen 2039.

Estimation:€35,768.04

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