IN CONTEMPORARY COLOUR & ILLUMINATION

SENAULT, Louis. Heures nouvelles tirées de la Sainte-Écriture. Écrites et gravées par L. Senault. [2], 260 pp. Engraved throughout, with innumerable calligraphic ornaments, including engraved historiated initials. 8vo., 175 x 118 mm, bound in an elegant French mosaic binding of the nineteenth century, elaborately gilt with coloured onlays of red, green, and yellow motifs onto blue crushed morocco, elaborate gilt-tooling to an all over design, four raised bands on spine, compartments similarly gilt with coloured onlays, decorated marbled endpapers, a.e.g. Paris: Chez l'Auteur, [s.d., after 1690].

Absolutely ravishing copy in full contemporary colour and illumination throughout. In a French mosaic binding. Senault's Book of Hours is designed and engraved throughout by one of the finest Writing Masters of seventeenth-century France.

"Louis Senault followed Pierre Moreau in producing two writing books (one dated 1668) and then concentrating on successive editions of a devotional work printed from the same plates. But while Moreau finished by producing printed books with some of the characteristics of handwriting, Senault endeavoured to preserve in his engraved books the full flavour of a contemporary manuscript. After the death of his daughter, Elisabeth Senault, he produced some equally attractive smaller engraved Heures nouvelles dedicated to the Grand Dauphin" ( Printing and the Mind of Man). All of Senault's works, including his Books of Hours, were used as model books by students and aspiring amateurs, and copies in any condition are difficult to obtain.

While the present Book of Hours is undated, on page 69 it is distinguished by a certain Prière pour Madame la Dauphine, i.e. Marie Anne Christine, Victoire de Bavière, who died in 1690. Earlier states also contained a dedication leaf to the Dauphine, and the absence of this leaf in the present copy, combined with the fact that the breasts of the "impudiques sirenes" on p. 210 are not exposed, suggests that this volume is of a later state. An exceptional jewel-like copy. Exceedingly rare with contemporary colour and illumination.

PMM (British Museum Section) 98. Bonacini, Bibliografia della arti scrittorie 1689. Jessen 2426. Brunet III, 148.