GROS DE BOZE, Claude (1680-1753)
Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres depuis Son Etablissement, avec les Eloges des Academiciens Morts depuis Son Renouvellement. Tomes I-III
Paris: Chez Hippolyte-Louis Guerin, rue S. Jacques, à S. Thomas d'Aquin, 1740. Three Volumes. 8vo. (6 1/2 x 4 1/8 inches). Volume I: [i]-xxiij [1] [1]-251 [5]. 280 pp. Volume II: [4] [1]-470 [4]. 478 pp. Volume III: [4] [1]-468 [10]. 482 pp. Engraved frontispiece by Jean Daullé after Antoine Coypel, engraved title vignettes, woodcut head- and tail-pieces. Half-title in each Volume. Text in French.
Contemporary French red morocco with triple gilt fillet, arms of the Count of Maurepas on boards, five raised bands forming six compartments on gilt spine, gilt-lettered in the second and third, gilt decoration in rest, gilt dentelles, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers with green silk placemarker
Provenance: Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, 1st Count of Maurepas (1701-1781)
History of a major French learned academy, in a fine red morocco binding, for the period's leading French collector of incunabula.
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, founded in 1663 and initially organized by Louis XIV's finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, is a French learned society devoted to the humanities and one of the five academies of the Institut de France. Among its original members were Jean Chapelain, François Charpentier, Jacques Cassagne, Amable de Bourzeys, and Charles Perrault. According to its charter, it is primarily concerned with the study of the monuments, documents, languages, and cultures of the civilizations of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the classical period. Gros de Boze's book is a history of the Academy since its establishment, with praise for the academicians who have died since its renewal. Gros de Boze, was a French scholar, numismatist, and a leading collector of incunabula, who became a member of the Académie around 1700. In 1706, he was made the organization's secretary, and in 1715 he was elected to the Académie Française. In 1719, he became a curator at the Cabinet des Médailles, a post he held for the remainder of his life.
Cioranescu 32623. Cohen 184-185.
Item #39685
Price: $4,500.00