DIEU DE SAINT-JEAN (Jean). - Lot 3

DIEU DE SAINT-JEAN (Jean). [Mode de France]. [Paris : Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean, 1678-1696]. - In-folio, 390 x 250 : 71 plates. Red morocco, triple gilt fillet framing the boards, ornate ribbed spine, interior gilt roulette, glued paper lining and endpapers, gilt edges, modern slipcase (period binding). Colas, Bibliographie générale du costume et de la mode, no. 2629. - Maxime Préaud, "Femme de qualité en steinkerque et falbala", Revue de la BnF, 2013, n° 43, pp. 64-73. A rare and sumptuous collection of 71 costume plates, including three doubles. They are all hand-colored, some enhanced with gold or silver. These beautiful engravings depict the royal family (Louis XIV, the queen, the dauphin and the dauphine, Monsieur and Madame), a large number of "quality" men and women in French fashion, as well as a knight of Malta, a peasant and a peasant woman from the outskirts of Paris, a couple dressed "incognito" to cross the city, mesdemoiselles Loison, a quality man playing the bass viol, and more. The plates have been mounted on tabs and numbered in pen in the lower left-hand corner. Although the first ones are undated, they seem to have been bound in the chronological order of their execution. They all bear the name of the printed artist, Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean. The engraver's name appears on only a few plates: Nicolas Bazin, Franz Ertinger, Galand and Scotin. Three are dated 1678, 13 1683, 4 1684, 2 1685, 4 1686, 2 1687, 3 1688, 4 1689, 1 1690, 1 1692, 5 1693, 6 1694, 1 1696 and 22 are undated. Colas notes that "fashion plates engraved by this artist are almost always found together with Bonnart's collection [...]. This engraver [Saint-Jean] is credited with a hundred or so prints dating from 1678 to 1695; the Cabinet des estampes owns 72 of them, mainly depicting men or women of quality in their various outfits. In addition to the in-4 format plates that can be added to Bonnart's collection, there are some in folio format plates bearing the Quai Pelletier address and the signature J. D. De St Jean." Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean, the inventor of a new genre of fashion engraving. Little is known about the life of Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean. Son of a painter named Jean Dieu, he was born around 1654 and admitted to the Académie royale de peinture et sculpture in 1671, aged just seventeen. On February 20, 1683, he married Catherine Danin, daughter of a Parisian "maître affineur et departeur d'or et d'argent". He died in 1695 and was buried at Saint-Gervais. Donneau de Visé repeatedly praised his talent in the Mercure Galant, emphasizing the innovative style of his fashion engravings. "According to the Mercure galant, the invention of a new genre of fashion engraving belongs to Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean, with a series of prints published a year or two before March 1678, well before the series of small engravings after Jean Berain, le grand ordonnateur des fêtes et spectacles royaux, maître du décor et des costumes, par la pointe spirituelle de Jean Lepautre, avec laquelle on fait en général commencer véritablement l'histoire de la gravure de mode en France" (Maxime Préaud). THE ONLY KNOWN COPY IN PERIOD COLORS. It is possible that it was the artist's wife who, after his death, collected his fashion engravings and sold them as a collection. The address on the last two plates, dated 1695 and 1696 respectively, reads "chez la veuve st Jean". Catherine Danin also seems to have played a role in the coloring of the plates, if we are to believe a few proofs preserved at the Arsenal library: on three of them, we read, following the title, the penciled inscription "enluminée par la femme de S.t Jean" (illuminated by S.t Jean's wife). A copy in black and bound in calf is kept at Princeton University. It comprises 74 plates, three of which are missing here: plates 2 ("Femme de qualité en déshabillé reposant sur un lit d'ange", double), 56 ("Homme de qualité en habit garny de rubans") and 62 ("Dame de la plus haute qualité"). An exceptional colored copy, bound in contemporary red morocco. Fine restorations and retouching to binding, rare worm work. A few restored tears to the boards, some foxing and handling marks.