BOCCACE, Giovanni. Le Décameron. Londres (Paris), S.E., 1757-1761
‘One of the most successful illustrated books of the 18th century’, whose French edition “is more sought-after and often more expensive” (Cohen).
This translation, commissioned from Antoine Le Maçon by Marguerite d’Angoulême, is aimed at a literate readership with a taste for the language of the 16th century.
The edition is decorated with 5 title-frontispices, a portrait of the author, 110 hors-texte figures and 97 culs-de-lampe engraved in etching after drawings by Gravelot, Boucher, Eisen and Cochin. A very fine, wide-margined copy, Volume 2 of which contains the first-edition engravings – visible from the characteristic initials on the verso of the engravings.
This was undoubtedly Gravelot’s first real masterpiece, and the Goncourt brothers praised his work:
‘A charming fantasy in which the pencil and imagination of the draughtsman, playing this time in the past which was only the past of the tales, dresses the Pampinées in the taste of the rue Saint-Honoré, transports on the architectural background of Saint-Sulpice the appointments of Santa Maria Novella, the horizon of Florence on a ground of the Grand-Trianon and thus makes a French translation where Boccaccio is arranged in the fashion of the ideal that the France of Louis XV makes of him’.
Scattered foxing and a few slightly browned leaves, some wear to the bindings, restorations to the lower cover and to the spine of volume 1.
Cohen, 160 ; Goncourt, L’art du XVIIIe siècle, édition définitive. Post-face de Pol Neveux, P. Flammarion, S.d.
In-8 (213 x 142 mm), 5 volumes : T1 – 320 pp ; T2 – [3] ff, 292 pp, [1] f. ; T3 – [3] ff, 203 pp, [3] ff ; T4 – [3] ff, 280 pp, [1] f. ; T5 – [3] ff, 269 pp, [2] ff. Full grained calf, triple framing of the boards, smooth spine decorated with flowers on the sides and a fleuron in the centre, olive title-piece, fillet on the edges, gilt edges, inner lace (contemporary binding).
