BOUND WITH THE FIGURE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND JOSEPHINE, A - Lot 91

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  3. BOUND WITH THE FIGURE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND JOSEPHINE, A - Lot 91
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Lot n° 91
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BOUND WITH THE FIGURE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND JOSEPHINE, A - Lot 91
BOUND WITH THE FIGURE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND JOSEPHINE, AND WITH THE ARMS OF THE FIRST EMPIRE. - DE ROSSI (Giovanni Gherardo). Scherzi poetici & pittorici. Parma, co' tipi bodoniani, 1795. In-8, (108) pp. of which the last 3 are blank, garnet morocco, smooth spine partitioned and decorated with gilt "PB" on the tail, double gilt fillet framing the boards with gilt corner fleurons and gilt crowned coat of arms in the center, gilt edges, inner gilt roulette, gilt edges; spotting, more particularly visible on the boards, the spine and the endpapers, a few quires untied (period binding). AN ELEGANT IMPRESSION BY GIAMBATTISTA BODONI. These Scherzi poetici & pittorici were printed concurrently in several formats with the prints in several versions (in black with or without frames with antique motifs, or two-colored "Etruscan" or in color). They were originally printed in a limited edition in Rome, which is no longer available. A collection of short allegorical pieces of a loving nature, in anacreontic verse, a genre in which the author excelled. Later, an admiring Giacomo Leopardi would still think of imitating him. WRITER, ART CRITIC AND POLITICAL MAN, GIOVANNI GHERARDO DE ROSSI (1754-1827) became known as an author of comedies and essays on painters and sculptors, including Canova. For a long time director of the Royal Academy of Portugal for Fine Arts in Rome, he devoted the end of his life to the study of archaeology, became a corresponding member of the Institute of France (1812) and then director of the Royal Neapolitan Academy of Rome (1816). In 1798, because of his business experience, he was appointed Minister of Finance of the Roman Republic established by France, and remained in office until 1800. NEOCLASSIQUE ILLUSTRATION ENGRAVED ON COPPER by Francesco Rosaspina after José Teixeira Barreto: 41 plates out of text, including a frontispiece, heightened by hand in colors. COPY WITH THE FIGURE " PB " OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE AND JOSEPHINE, AND WITH THE ARMS OF THE FIRST EMPIRE. The numeral was affixed with the first binding decoration (OHR, pl. 2653, iron no. 3 in small format), while the coat of arms was added during the First Empire (iron absent from OHR). VERY RARE IN MOROCCO. Indeed, most of the volumes acquired personally by Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine, gathered before the Empire at their home in the rue des Victoires and then at the château de Malmaison, were soberly bound in speckled fawn calf with the figure "PB" at the tail of the spine, or, if they were already bound, received a piece of leather with this figure at the tail of the spine. The reading of this number "PB" is controversial: the monogram is traditionally deciphered as the initials of the names "Pagerie" and "Bonaparte". However, it was noted that the letters signed by Josephine with her patrimonial name were in the form "Lapagerie", and that among the signatures of Bonaparte appeared at the end of the Directory the abbreviated form "BP", which would allow to read the monogram of the bindings rather as "BP", thus as the initials of "Buona Parte" (Jérémie Benoit and Maurice Catinat, in Livres précieux du musée de Malmaison, Paris, RMN, 1992, pp. 63-66). But in the end, the most convincing hypothesis would remain that of a "Pagerie Bonaparte" reading, considering the frequent use at the time of enciphering the objects of a married woman with the initials of her maiden and married name, for example "RB" for "Ramolino Bonaparte" in the case of Napoleon I's mother, or "HBB" for "Hortense Beauharnais Bonaparte", and by observing moreover that the figure "PB" continued to be used on the objects of the castle of Malmaison until the beginning of 1805, and even in 1808 for volumes offered to Joséphine (Charles-Éloi Vial, Napoléon et les bibliothèques, Paris, CNRS éditions/Perrin, 2021, pp. 32-33). Provenance : former collection of Émile Brouwet (Napoléon et son temps, Paris, Drouot, 13 November 1934, n° 8, with reproduction in the catalog).
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