Curtius Rufus (Quintus)

De Rebus Gestis Alexandri

Magni Regis Macedonum, Libri Decem. Quorum, qui toti temporis iniuria interciderant, duo priores, veterum exemplarum præfidio restituti sunt. Ad Haec. Alexandri magni vitam ab Ioanne Monacho artificiosa brevitate omnia illius pene complictente, praposuimus. Accessere orationum & rerum memorabilium indices.

Woodcut devices on the title and the recto of the penultimate page. Ruled in red throughout.

Small 8vo. [127 x 77 x 33 mm]. [16]ff, 325, [56], [3]blank pp. Bound in Paris in brown calf, the covers tooled in gilt and decorated with silver and dark paint, the border composed of a single and double fillets with hatched cornerpieces, enclosing tendrils with open fleurons and leaves surrounding a large central cartouche containing the arms, name and motto of Jacques de Malenfant. The edges of the boards hatched and tooled with a fillet in gilt, plain endleaves, the edges gilt and elaborately gauffered. (Rebacked in calf with four raised bands and the panels tooled in gilt to a saltire design, the corners and edges of the boards skilfully repaired, lacking ties). Contained within a cloth drop-over box. Stock no. ebc1851.
Lugduni [i.e Lyon]: [Michael Sylvius, Typographus] Apud Ioannem Frellonium, 1555.

Bound with:

SALLUSTIUS (Caius Crispus).
De L. Sergii Catilinæ coniuratione, ac Bello Iugurthino historiæ.
Cum aliis quibusdam, quæ sequens indicabit pagella.

Woodcut device on the title-page. Ruled in red throughout.
263, [46] pp.

Lugduni [i.e. Lyon]: [Excudebat Symphorianus Barbierus] Apud Ioannem Frellonium, 1563.

There is an original tear to the outer margin of leaf d1 in the first work, without any loss of text. These are good clean copies.
The two works were bound together, probably between 1563 and 1566, in Paris for Jacques de Malenfant. He was probably the son of Pierre de Malenfant, Sieur de Persac, later councillor of the Parlement de Toulouse, who married Cathérine de Minut in 1529. Jacques was one of the almoners of Marguérite d'Angoulême, who in November 1546 sent him to Paris to continue his studies. He was still in Paris in 1567 as he recorded in a copy of a 1558 Erasmus in which he wrote "Lutetiae 1567". In 1570 he was back in Toulouse and in 1606 a M. de Malenfant is mentioned as greffier civil au Parlement de Toulouse.

The bindings commissioned by Malenfant while in Paris were the subject of a study by Mirjam Foot in The Henry Davis Gift, vol.1, chapter 12, pp.156-169. She identified 23 books which he collected during his stay in Paris, and of these 17 were definitely bound for him, and five others may have been bound for him but have since been rebound. The present volume is listed by Foot as no.10 in her Appendix II (p.166). To this number can be added four further bindings in the Bibliotheca Wittockiana and two or three in the Bibliothèque de Toulouse, which are recorded by Hobson and Culot in Italian and French 16th-Century Bookbindings, pp.136-139. All of Malenfant's books were small format editions of the classics, with the exception of the Erasmus which is a folio.

This binding is typical of the style favoured by Malenfant, though examples do differ in details. The gauffered edges are especially elaborate and can be compared with the treatment of three of the volumes in the Wittockiana which are illustrated by Hobson and Culot on p.139. Foot managed to make a clear connection between Malenfant's tools and those used by Claude de Picques on bindings for Catherine de Medici and Claude Berbis. I illustrated and described a binding by Claude de Picques as item 49 in my catalogue 10.

From the personal collection of the antiquarian bookseller George McLeish, who retired in 1957. His books were sold at Phillips, London, 9/11/2001, and this was lot 175.