BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED 16TH-CENTURY FRENCH TREATISE ON THE REGION OF BURGUNDY, WITH FINE PROVENANCE

SAINT-JULIEN, Pierre de. De l'Origine des Bourgongnons, et Antiquite des Estats de Bourgongne, Deux Livres. Paris: Henri Thierry for Nicolas Chesneau, 1581. Small folio, full 18th-century polished armorial brown calf gilt, pp. (32), 647, (34). $3800.

First edition of this history of the French region of Burgundy (once a duchy, free county, and two kingdoms), illustrated with six superb folding double-page plates comprising woodcut city maps of Dijon, Beaune, Autun, Macon, and Chalon-sur-Saone, and a view of Tournus, in a fine 18th-century armorial binding.

Pierre de Saint-Julien (1520-1593), a nobleman from Chalon-sur-Saone devoted himself to historical research and wrote a number of works on the history of France of which this historical and topographical survey of his home country, Burgundy, is the most important. The maps, all lettered and accompanied by printed keys, range in size from 8 by 11 to 16 by 11 inches. The map of Chalon is reproduced and discussed as the most accurate of early maps of that city. Included in the volume is a full-page woodcut coat-of-arms of Saint-Julien. These maps were originally published in Belleforest's revision of Sebastian Munster's Cosmographie Universelle, 1575. Printed in red and black, with ornamental headpieces and engraved initials throughout. Text in French. Brunet V:51. Brun, 288. Mortimer, Harvard College French Sixteenth Century Books, No. 479. With the 17th-century signature on title page of Englishman James Joyce, and the Chiswick House bookplate of the Duke of Devonshire.

A fine and complete copy in armorial binding.