Les Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon

Paris: Defer de Maisonneuve, 1791.
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34cm x 25cm. 163, [3] pages, engraved frontispiece portrait, 1 original dedication drawing, 4 colour stipple engraved plates. Full leather signed fine binding by S. David, five raised bands, gilt lettering and ornate gilt decoration, all edges gilt, gilt dentelles, silk doublures, marbled endpapers. Text is in French.

The Loves of Psyche and Cupid by Jean De La Fontaine with colour illustrations based on paintings by M. Schall. One of the most striking editions of Fontaine’s adaptation of the story of Cupid and Psyche with coloured stipple engravings by Bonnefoy, Mme Demonchy, and Colibert after Jean-Frederic Schall. This copy with the advertisement leaf (often lacking) announcing the publication of Milton’s Paradise Lost, with an additional portrait engraving frontispiece by Edelinck after H. Rigault, and an original drawing dedication “quatre amis dont la connaissance avait commence par le Parnasse” [four friends whose acquaintance had begun at Parnassus]: La Fontaine, Racine, Moliere, and Boileau, in pen and Indian ink enhanced with gold and colouring on vellum signed L. Benard 1893, bound in a fine signed binding by the Paris bookbinder Salvador David (1859-1929).

Very minor rubbing to leather. Near Fine Condition.

AU$5,500.00

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