Picasso | Jakob, Le Siège de Jérusalem, Paris, 1914, red morocco by Semet & Plumelle

Pablo Picasso─Max Jacob

Le siège de Jérusalem: grande tentation céleste de Saint Matorel. Illustré d'eaux fortes par Pablo Picasso. Paris: Daniel Kahnweiler, (1914)

4to (220 x 151mm.), copy number 72 from a limited edition of 100 copies, one of 85 copies on papier de Hollande de van Gelder, signed by the author and the artist beneath the limitation, 3 etchings and drypoints by Picasso with tissue guards, binding by Semet & Plumelle of crushed red morocco with a wide vertical band of navy morocco on each cover with coloured morocco onlays and gilt fillets in a Cubist pattern, flat spine similarly decorated, edges gilt and untrimmed, slipcase, original printed wrapper bound in

One of Picasso's earliest book illustrations, for the third of Max Jacob's books about St Matorel and his conversion to Christianity; he had previously illustrated the first of the trilogy with similar Cubist designs.

Georges Plumelle and Marcellin Semet worked together from 1925 to 1955, having become acquainted in the workshop of Léon Gruel; Semet was the binder and Plumelle the gilder.

LITERATURE:

The Artist and the Book 223

PROVENANCE:

Sale, Sotheby's New York, 2 June 1995, lot 209