Contes et Nouvelles de Boccace

2 volumes in-8 de (12) ff., 366 pp. ; 427 pp., (6) ff.
Maroquin rouge, triple filet doré encadrant les plats, armoiries dorées au centre, fleuron d’angle, dos à nerfs richement orné, coupes décorées, roulette intérieure, tranches dorées sur marbrures. Reliure armoriée de l’époque attribuable à Boyet.

157 x 97 mm.

Boccace, Jean. Contes et Nouvelles de Boccace, florentin.
Traduction libre, accommodée au goût de ce temps & enrichi de figures en taille-douce gravées par M. Romain de Hooghe.
Amsterdam, George Gallet, 1697.

Première, rare et célèbre édition des Contes de Boccace ornée en premier tirage d'un frontispice et de 100 figures à mi-page composés et gravés à l'eau-forte par Romain de Hooghe.

Il était neveu de Peter de Hooch. Il travailla d'abord à Amsterdam et à Haarlem, puis, en 1662 il vint à Paris, sur l'invitation de van der Meulen. II y travailla assez longtemps et y reçut, en 1675, ses lettres de noblesse du roi de Pologne Jean Sobieski. En 1683, il est cité comme membre de la confrérie de La Haye. Il revint à Haarlem en 1687 et ne paraît pas avoir quitté cette ville à partir de cette date. Artiste très original, plein de verve, il fut surtout remarquable comme graveur. Il a gravé des sujets mythologiques, des portraits, des sujets d'histoire et des paysages. Le Musée d'Amsterdam conserve de lui une Composition allégorique.

« His versatile artistic talent is also apparent from his sculptures, paintings and ornamental, etched, goblets. Romeyn's etchings were, for the larger part, done on order for publishers, printers and authors, which shows a definite mercantile trait in his character. His good educational background is also illustrated by the fact that he dealt, almost exclusively, with interesting and influential people. No wonder then that he also loved the world of books.

Romeyn de Hooghe's first book illustration is dated 1667, when Constantijn Huygens - poet, statesman, and a faithful servant to the House of Orange - commissioned him to do an etching of the 'Zeestraet', which Huygens had designed as a (still existing) main road from The Hague to Scheveningen. Shortly after De Hooghe had travelled to Paris, where he witnessed the arrival of Charles II of England at Saint Germain-en-Laye, and the Baptism of the Dauphin, he made the acquaintance of Sebastian de Beaulieu, who was engaged in the production of a topographical work on the Spanish (i.e. Southern) Netherlands. For him he etched four frontispieces, allegorical like all his later ones. These were usually explained by a 'Verklaringe der Tytul-prent', and were meant to contain a sort of symbolical quintessence of the books they preceded.

In Paris he also designed the frontispiece of the first book he illustrated, which is by no coincidence an emblem book, since this kind of literature was very much en vogue at that time, and at the same time a challenge to the artist's fantasy. The other designs for Het Voorhof der Ziele (1667) he probably made in Holland, as one is a faithful topographical view of the port of Rotterdam. Soon after he finished this book he was commissioned by Ioannes Hessius, a publisher at Paderborn, to engrave topographical views after the designs of J. G. Rudolphi. Blaeu ordered a frontispiece to Hugo Grotius's De jure belli ac pacis (1670).

So far De Hooghe had illustrated life in all its reality, but this should not be taken to mean that he was only a realist : after the 1672 war was over his inquisitive mind turned towards the 'twilight zone', - where fantasy is the only welcome guest. He etched unicorns, phantoms and ghosts, occult phenomena and peculiar ceremonies of natives in far-away countries, oracles and sibyls. A glimpse of his fanciful mind is seen in his illustrations to the Scriptures, particularly so in the Apocalypse. His remark that the Apocalypse was conceived by Saint John in his dreams was one of the accusations of blasphemy made against him during the court case in 1690.

De Hooghe also depicted human nature : its peculiarities in the Capricci, and fashion and sexual behaviour in the Contes & Nouvelles of Boccaccio and other authors, its activities in his etchings of crafts, like for instance those of the sculptor, the painter, the engraver, and the men working at the Academy of Art.
De Hooghe bas executed more works than are known today. He was more famous in his own day than he is in ours.” John Landwehr.

Remarquable exemplaire relié en maroquin décoré de l'époque aux armes de Samuel Bernard (1651-1739).

Samuel Bernard, fils de Samuel, peintre et graveur, fut l’un des plus célèbres traitants enrichis sous le ministère de Chamillard ; sa fortune était prodigieuse et il en fit un noble usage ; il prêta aussi des sommes considérables à Louis XIV et à Louis XV. Il fut anobli et obtint en 1720 l'érection en comté de sa seigneurie de Coubert, en Brie. Il mourut conseiller d'État le 28 janvier 1739. Samuel Bernard s'était marié deux fois : la première avec Madeleine Clergeau et la seconde, le 13 août 1720, avec Pauline-Félicité de Saint-Chamans.