Paradin, Devises heroiques, Antwerp, 1561, French red morocco gilt, Du Vivier-La Vallière-Beckford copy

Paradin, Claude. Les devises heroiques, de M. Claude Paradin, Chanoine de Beaujeu, du Signeur Gabriel Symeon, & autres Aucteurs. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1561

The Du Vivier-Guyon de la Sardière-La Vallière-Beckford-Heywood Bright copy. A charming copy of the first edition of Paradin’s Devises to be published by Christophe Plantin, and the first edition in which 37 of Gabriele Simeoni's devices from Le imprese heroiche et morali of 1559 are also included (see lot 617).

The monogram 'HD' surrounded by a group of four s-fermés has been widely attributed to Hierosme Du Vivier (1660-ca 1720). Du Vivier appears to have been a collector of illustrated books, with his monogram appearing on copies of Jacobus Bruck's Emblemata Politica and Judah Abravanel printed by Jean de Tournes. This copy also has a woodcut on both front and rear paste-downs, a practice associated with HD and Du Vivier. Significantly, this copy also has a manuscript ownership inscription 'Du Vivier' on the title page. For more about Du Vivier's bindings, see Isabelle de Conihout and Pascal Ract-Madoux, Reliures françaises du XVIIe siècle (Chantilly: Musée Condé, 2002), pp.65-66.

The woodcuts added to the pastedowns in this copy are both by Jost Amman and published in Hans Sachs' Eygentliche Beschreibung aller Stände auff Erden

in 1568. On the front pastedown is 'der bergknapp' (the miner) and at the back is 'der rebmann' (a farmer).

For another binding with the HD monogram, but in a very different style, see lot 593.

16mo (103 x 76 mm). Italic type, 27 lines plus headline. collation: A-Y⁸ (missigned F3 as F5, R5 as R3, V3 as V5, V4 as V3): 176 leaves. Woodcut printer's device to title, 217 woodcut devices. (Some devices trimmed.)

binding: Early eighteenth-century French red morocco gilt (112 x 80 mm), monogram HD and S fermé on covers, double gilt fillet border, edges sprinkled red and blue.

provenance: Hierosme Du Vivier (1660-ca 1720), monogram on binding and inscription to title-page — Jean Baptiste Denis Guyon de Sardière (1674-1759), sale, 21 January 1760, lot 1159 — Louis César de la Baume Le Blanc, duc de La Vallière (1708-1780), sale, Paris, 1783, lot 3159 — Philip Augustus Hanrott (1776-1856), sale, Evans, 25 February 1834, lot 1170 — William Beckford (1760-1844), sale of the Beckford Library removed from Hamilton Palace, third portion, Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge, 3 July 1883, lot 413, £4-15s, to Pickering — Allan Heywood Bright (1862-1941), sale, Christie's, 16 July 2014, lot 142. acquisition: Purchased at the preceding sale. references: Adams, Rawles and Saunders F.462; Landwehr, Romanic Emblem Books 565; Mortimer, Harvard French 411