Denis Dodart

Memoires pour servir a l'histoire de plantes. Paris: (Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy), de l’Imprimerie royale, 1676

FIRST EDITION, broadsheets (557 x 405mm.), engraved frontispiece of the Académie Royale des Sciences by and after Sebastien Le Clerc and printed by Goyton, printed title with armori𝔉al vignette, engraved head- and tailpiece, engraved initial, 39 very fine full-sheet engraved plates (unnumbered) after Nicolas Robert by Robert (28) and Abraham Bosse (11), CONTEMPORARY FRENCH RED MOROCCO🌸 WITH THE ARMS OF LOUIS XIV (Olivier 2494 fer 10) within wide matching foliate borders, spine gilt in seven compartments with crowned monograms

A FINE COPY of the first publication of these fine plates by Nicolas Robert, perhaps the finest botanical engravings ever produced and “one of the great books in the history of botanical illustration, where all the technical resources of engraving were utilized in presenting the plants as accurately as possible” (Hunt). This is one of the first publications of the Académie des sciences, and is a monument to the typographic, artistic and scientific skills assembled under the aegis of the Academꩵy by Louis XIV’s far-sighted and energetic minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The engraved frontispiece shows a meetin🎃g of the Academy in the Royal Library at Versailles, with Louis XIV and Colbert present. It is the first illustration of the meeting of any learned society.

This volume was a prospectus for the great Histoire des plantes, which was never formally published.

LITERATURE:

An Oak Spring Flora, p. 168; Hunt 343; Nissen BBI 502