Attractive fleur-de-lys French binding with important Provenance; Plautus 1630

PLAUTUS. Comoediae superstites XX. Ad doctissimorum virorum editiones repraesentatae.
Amsterdam: Johannes Janssonius, 1630.
16mo, pp. 692.

A very good copy of Plautus in a dazzling contemporary French binding, richly gilt in the semé de fleurs-de-lys style. Contemporary olive morocco, covers bordered in intricate dentelle rolls worked in tiny gilt tooling, with inner dentelle panels formed of lozenges and ribbon-like patterns. The panels are filled with an all-over semé decoration, tooled with alternating fleurs-de-lis and small floral rosettes. Raised bands, spine gilt in five compartments with matching semé ornament and central geometric flower tools; all edges gilt and gauffered. Hinges with only very light wear, a few small darker stains on the boards, but overall a remarkably well-preserved binding of jewel-like effect. Engraved allegorical frontispiece with early manuscript ownership inscription Duquesne at foot; large woodcut printer’s device at rear. Pages crisp, lightly browned and stained in places.

This attractive edition contains the twenty surviving comedies of Plautus, including Amphitruo, Aulularia, Captivi, Menaechmi, Miles Gloriosus, and Mostellaria. Titus Maccius Plautus (c.254–184 BC), Rome’s greatest comic dramatist, adapted Greek New Comedy into vigorous Latin plays, written in the idiom of everyday speech. Their influence was profound: Plautus was rediscovered in the Renaissance and remained a model for European comedy from Machiavelli to Molière.

The binding belongs to the so-called “atelier du semé de fleurs-de-lis,” active in Paris in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their characteristic all-over gilt designs, strewn with repeated fleurons or fleurs-de-lis, were especially used on small devotional and classical texts. While unsigned, this example demonstrates the style at its richest and best preserved.

Provenance: Early inscription of Duquesne, plausibly linked to Marquis Michel-Ange Duquesne de Menneville (1700–1778), Governor of New France, under whose command Fort Duquesne (now Pittsburgh) was built.

References: USTC 1018270; Schweiger II, 765.