Hippocrates, Livre de la generation de lhomme, Paris, 1559, Flemish calf for Marc Laurin dated 1559

Hippocrates. Livre de la generation de lhomme, tresvtile & tresnecessaire à sçauoir, recueilly des antiques & plus seurs autheurs de medecine & philosophie, par Iacques Syluius iadis docteur & professeur du Roy en l’art de medecine à Paris: & depuis mis en François, par Guillaume Chrestian medecin ordinaire du Roy, & de messeigneurs ses enfants [part 2:] Livre d’Hippocrates, de la genitvre de l’homme, traduict de Grec & mis en François par Guillaume Chrestian, medecin ordinaire du Roy & de messeigneurs ses enfans [part 3:] Livre de la natvre et vtilité des moys des femmes, & de la curation des maladies qui en suruiennent, composé en Latin par feu M. Iacques Syluius professeur du Roy en medecine, & depuis mis en Françoys par M. Guillaume Chrestian medecin ordinaire du Roy & de Messeigneurs ses enfans. Paris: Guillaume Morel, 1559

A compendium of three treatises on generation and menstruation, two by the Galenist Jacques Dubois (Sylvius; 1478–1555), translated from the original Latin (1555) by Guillaume Chrestien (1500–1558), physician in ordinary to François I and afterwards to Henri II, and a related work from the Hippocratic corpus, also translated by Chrestien. The treatises are individually dedicated by the translator, to Henri II (Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 13 December 1558), the newly-married dauphin François II (26 November 1558), and the King’s mistress, Diane de Poitiers (15 September 1558). The stated audience for the translations consisted of women like Diane, concerned with health and illness in a domestic context.

This copy was bound for Marc Laurin (Lauryn, Lauweryn; 1530–1581), still a minor when he succeeded his father in the lordship of Watervliet (near Ghent) and inherited an ample fortune. His first passion was for collecting antique coins and medals. In 1558, he contracted with the painter and engraver Hubertus Goltzius to produce illustrations for a printed catalogue of his numismatic collection, and they subsequently established a private press in Bruges (the first volume of their catalogue appeared in 1563). Around the middle of the century Laurin was in Paris, where he met the coin-collector and bibliophile Jean Grolier. He began to patronize two ateliers which worked for Grolier, known to us as the Pecking Crow Binder and the Cupid’s Bow Binder, and he emulated Grolier by commissioning bindings lettered with his own motto (valor in difficulty) and the “et amicorum” formula. The surviving volumes, nearly all Aldine editions of classical authors, are additional evidence of Grolier’s guidance. Thereafter, Laurin patronized an anonymous Flemish bindery, where books for his own library and presentation copies of the “Officina Goltziana” publications were bound according to the Parisian pattern.

In 1928, E.P. Goldschmidt included, with hesitation, the present volume in a census of twenty-one bindings belonging to Marc Laurin, as he was unaware of any other binding bearing both Marc Laurin’s arms and motto (the only bindings then recorded with the Laurin arms were of demonstrably later date (see Joannis Guigard, Armorial du bibliophile, II, p. 292 and the Armorial Belge du Bibliophile, p. 788), and Goldschmidt doubted its genuineness. At present, about thirty-five bindings executed for Marc Laurin are known, of which ten are Flemish. Four of the latter display Marc Laurin’s armorial insignia and motto on their covers. Our binding is comparable to one in the British Library, a quarto bound in gold-tooled red goatskin, Laurin’s motto within a wreath on the upper cover, the title above and formula “M. Laurini Et Amicorum M.D.LIX” below, and his arms within the same wreath on the lower cover. The other two volumes are folios, in different shades of brown goatskin, with the arms placed on upper cover within the same wreath, lettering “M. Laurini Et Amicorum” below, and the motto within the same wreath on lower cover. The three other bindings with both Laurin’s armorial insignia and motto are:

(1) Enea Vico, Augustarum imagines aereis formis expressae: vitae quoque earundem breuiter enarratae, signorum etiam, quae in posteriori parte numismatum efficta sunt, ratio explicata: ab Aenea Vico Parmense (Venice: Paolo Manuzio, 1558). Marc Laurin (armorial supralibros & motto). — William, 7th Duke of Devonshire (1808-1891), exlibris — London, British Library, C.132.i.60.

Howard Nixon, “Bookbindings acquired by the Department of Printed Books 1952-62” in British Museum Quarterly 26 (September 1962), pp.11-17 & Pl.2; Foot, op. cit., I, pp.222, 224 (as a Paris binding by Claude Picques, with the motto and arms added later; that attribution was subsequently withdrawn, and the binding is now localised to “Flanders”).

(2) Epistolae diversorum philosophorum, oratorum, rhetorum [Greek] (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, [29] March 1499). Marc Laurin (armorial supralibros & motto). Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland (1675-1722); Puttick and Simpson, Bibliotheca Sunderlandiana: sale catalogue of the truly important and very extensive library of printed books known as the Sunderland or Blenheim library, London, 17-27 July 1882, lot 4234 — Bernard Quaritch, London - bought in sale (£6 6s) — Adolphe Bordes — H.P. Kraus, New York, 1961 — Otto Schäfer (1912-2000); Sotheby’s, The Collection of Otto Schafer, Part I: Italian Books, New York, 8 December 1994, lot 72 ($90,500). Current location not traced.

Foot, op. cit., I, p.224.

(3) Hubertus Goltzius, Vivae omnium fere imperatorum imagines, a Caio Julio Caesare usque ad Carolum V et Ferdinandum ejus fratrem, ex antiquis veterum numismatis solertissime adumbratae (Antwerp: Gilles Coppens van Diest for Goltzius, 1557). Marc Laurin (armorial supralibros & motto). Nicolas Rauch, Geneva — Otto Schäfer (1912-2000); Sotheby’s, The Collection of Otto Schäfer, Part III: Illustrated books and historical bindings, New York, 1 November 1995, lot 100 ($68,500). Current location not traced.

Foot, op. cit., I, p.224; Manfred von Arnim, Europäische Einbandkunst aus sechs Jahrhunderten: Beispiele aus der Bibliothek Otto Schäfer Schweinfurt (Schweinfurt 1992), no. 49.

3 parts in one volume, 8vo (164 x 113 mm). Roman type, 20 lines plus headline (shoulder-notes in italic). collation: A–C⁸ D⁶ E–F⁸ G² H–T⁸: 144 leaves. Morel's woodcut device on title-page and both section-titles, floriated woodcut initials.

binding: Flemish (Bruges?) brown calf (169 x 119 mm), dated 1559, for Marc Laurin, border of 3 gilt and multiple blind fillets mitred at angles, in center of upper cover a gilt wreath containing Laurin’s motto “VIRTVS . IN . ARDVO .” with title “LA GENERATION DE LHOMME” above and “M. LAVRINI . ET . AMIORVM [sic] MD.LIX.” below, his gilt arms on the lower cover, spine with 5 full and 2 half bands, gilt leaf in compartments, edges gilt. (Panels skilfully laid down on nineteenth-century structure, some light abrasion.) Green morocco folding-case with plexiglass window. 

provenance: Marc Laurin (supralibros, dated 1559) — J. Léonard Hebbelynck (blue stamp with white initials “I.L.H”; Boulouze & Jacques-Joseph Techener, Catalogue des livres, la plupart rares et curieux, de la bibliothèque de M. J.L.H…k, de Lille, Paris, 17–29 March 1856, lot 558), purchased by — unidentified owner (FF 110) — Archibald Acheson, 3rd Earl of Gosford (1806–1864), sold in 1878, to: — James Toovey, London (exlibris with motto “Inter folia fructus”; Maurice Delestre & Charles Porquet, Catalogue de livres rares et précieux, la plupart reliés en maroquin ancien avec armoiries, provenant de la bibliothèque d’un amateur anglais, Paris, 1–6 May 1882, lot 91), purchased by — unidentified owner (FF 255) — François-Florentin-Achille, baron Seillière (1813–1873), Château de Mello (Maurice Delestre & Charles Porquet, Catalogue de livres rares et précieux, manuscrits et imprimés, composant la bibliothèque de feu M. le baron Ach. S******, Paris, 5–15 May 1890, lot 187 [apparently bought-in, FF 375]; Maurice Delestre & Charles Porquet, Catalogue de livres rares et précieux composant la bibliothèque de feu M. le baron Ach. S******, Paris, 24–27 April 1893, lot 94), purchased by — unidentified owner (FF 300) — Bernard Quaritch, London (Catalogue 166, [1897], item 239, £36) — Sotheby’s, London, 25–28 March 1929, lot 250 [lots 250–253 offered as “The Property of a Nobleman”]), purchased by — “Wentworth” (£68) — Jean Blondelet (d. 2001; his monogram erased from lower pastedown) — Librairie Thomas-Scheler, Livres précieux du XVe au XIXe siècle: XXIIIe Biennale de Antiquaires, Paris, Grand Palais [2006], item 14 (€150,000). acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Thomas-Scheler, Paris, 2006.  

references: FB 29992; USTC 30192; for the binding, see Goldschmidt, Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings Exemplified and Illustrated from the Author’s Collection (London, 1928), p. 283 (no. 18); Nixon, Sixteenth-Century Gold-Tooled Bookbindings in the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York, 1971), p. 137; Foot, “The Bindings for Marc Laurin,” in The Henry Davis Gift: A Collection of Bookbindings, Volume 1: Studies in the History of Bookbinding (London, 1978), pp. 219–229 (p. 224).