A fine and large copy of the preferred edition of 'one of the most influential early emblematic works' which includes devices for many French royals including the crowned salamander of François I, the three crescents of Henri II and the crowned porcupine of Louis XII. It was the first book devoted to devices of historical persons, and served as a model book for artists and printers, useful for the latters publisher's devices.
Paradin's second edition was greatly enlarged with 70 woodcuts of new subjects and, as Mortimer notes, "Paradin has added a considerable amount of explanatory text to the devices, and it is this edition which was widely copied." Now in the larger 8vo format rather than the 16mo, there are 70 new woodcut, 104 blocks from the first edition of 1551, a further eight replacements while six have been omitted entirely; mottoes have also been changed for some of the blocks. "More significantly the nature of the work is changed: the original version giving a set of basic devices comprising woodcut figure plus motto, is transformed in 1557 by the addition at the end of each device of a French commentary explaining its significance, and identifying the person who used it, or - in the case of the unattributed devices - the universally applicable lesson which could be derived from them. In this new form - which became the norm for subsequent editions - Paradin's work is thus far more informative and overtly moralistic than in its original text-free form. Its increased 'educational' dimension is reflected also in the marginal notes accompanying the prose commentaries, identifying sources." (Alison Saunders, French Emblems at Glasgow).
Provenance: Neat Mss ownership inscription on title-page, ‘Isabelle Ctse Waldstein’, likely Countess Isabella Rzewuska (1783-1818) who married the eccentric Austrian Graf Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein in 1812 at the age of just 21. Little is known of her; a Polish emigré aristocrat and salonniere in Vienna in the early nineteenth century, the longest account of her can be found in her contemporary the Baroness du Montet's Souvenirs, in which she is described as being prodigiously witty, intelligent and attractive; 'Isabelle a la tête d'un homme et le coeur d'un femme, une instruction rare, des connaissances au-dessus des capacités ordinaires et de l'éducation de toutes les autres femmes'. The baroness refers to a novel written by the Countess Waldstein, but it appears never to have been published.
Praz, p. 122. Cartier De Tournes no. 379. Mortimer (French) 410. Brun p. 278. Adams, Rawles & Saunders French Emblem Books, F461. Vinet, Bibliographie des Beaux Arts, no. 840 (‘recueil fort interessant’).
