Description
230. # CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (MIGUEL DE)
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, annotations in French (varying hands) in the text, on upper pastedown and on first free endpaper, lacking K7-8, L1-L4, Y5-Y7 and Ee6-Ee8 (supplied in manuscript), K5-K6 and Y8 torn with loss to text (supplied in manuscript), last leaf torn with loss to text, light toning, armorial binding of polished tortoiseshell calf with the arms of Louis Treslon-Cauchon, spine lettered and elaborately tooled in gilt, compartments with double-rule borders and alternating griffin and fleur-de-lys cross motifs, upper cover detached, corners bumped, some loss to head of spine, 8vo (165 x 100mm.), Brussels, Roger Velpius and Huberto Antonio, 1611
RARE BRUSSELS EDITION OF DON QUIXOTE IN A CONTEMPORARY BINDING WITH THE ARMS OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FRENCH BIBLIOPHILES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
This edition of the first part of Don Quixote is the second published by Velpius in Brussels (after that of 1607), and the tenth of this text since the 1605 Madrid edition.
The contemporary binding bears the arms of Louis Treslon-Cauchon, known as Hesselin (1602-1622). On the spine, the griffin and the fleur de lys reference the heraldic ornaments of the Hesselin family. Hesselin was a prominent public intellectual and an ardent bibliophile who assembled a renowned private library with rare volumes on science, mathematics, and philosophy, alongside an impressive collection of Venetian art. Books from Hesselin's collection, in the contemporary armorial binding, are very scarce. In the 1650s, Hesselin served as "surintendant des plaisirs du roi", superintendent of the king's pleasures, at the court of the young Louis XIV, masterminding extravagant ballets, fireworks, and concerts for the royal court.
Provenance
Louis Treslon-Cauchon (1602-1662), known as Hesselin, armorial binding; early ink annotations and a later one dated 1830.
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