After Gilles Corrozet - photo 1
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After Gilles Corrozet

Lot 24
11.12.2024 14:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 13 860
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1349666
Lot 24 | After Gilles Corrozet
Estimate value
£ 4 000 – 6 000
After Gilles Corrozet
Les Sentences, Conseil, & Bons Enseignemens des Sept Sages de Grece, in French, illuminated calligraphic manuscript on vellum [France, Paris] 1573
A work of exquisite calligraphy: a French translation of the popular sayings attributed to the Seven Sages of ancient Greece.

113 x 80mm. i (paper) + 29 + i (paper) leaves, complete, collation: 11(of 2, ii a cancelled blank), 2-84, written in a handsome and precise calligraphic hand, the openings of the sayings in a larger script, each saying ending with a rhyming couplet in italics, initials touched in liquid gold, one calligraphic title-page, one page with device of crossed pens within a crown and banderoles and the calligrapher's motto 'Vive la plume', 7 openings with full calligraphic borders, each page of text within a double frame of liquid gold and brown (a few smudges, some minor show-through of text, else in excellent condition). Bound in 17th-century dark brown morocco gilt.

Contents: Les Sentences, Conseil, & Bons Enseignemens des Sept Sages de Grece / Escrit en l'an 1573, Vive la plume ff.1-29v: Thalis of Miletus f.2, Solon of Athens f.6, Chilon of Sparta f.10, Pittacus of Mytilene f.14, Bias of Priene f.18, Cleobulus of Lindos f.22, Periander of Corinth f.26.

The Seven Sages was the title given to the seven Greek philosophers and statesmen of the 7th-6th centuries BC who were renowned for their wisdom. The composition of this group, according to the 3rd-century biographer of the Greek philosophers Diogenes Laërtius, was a matter of some debate, but the first mention of a standard list of the seven is found in Plato's Protagoras. Later literary tradition ascribed to each sage a pithy saying of his own: a compilation of 147 maxims was preserved by the 5th-century scholar Stobaeus as 'Sayings of the Seven Sages'. These 'Dicta' or 'Sententiae' were subsequently translated into the vernacular: the 16th-century court-poet François Habert ('le Banni de liesse') translated them into French verse, while an abridged French version that includes potted biographies of the Sages appears in print by Gilles Corrozet in Paris in 1545. The present text follows the Corrozet version but is further abridged and does not include all of the sayings.

The device with the two crossed pens through a crown and the motto 'Vive la plume' is used by a number of calligraphers in the 16th and 17th centuries: we see it for example in several manuscripts by Esther Inglis.
Place of origin:Western Europe, France, Europe
Auction house category:Books and manuscripts
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
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11.12.2024 – 11.12.2024
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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