Contes et nouvelles

2 volumes 8vo of (12) ll., 366 pp. ; 427 pp., (6) ll.

Contemporary red morocco, triple gilt fillet on covers, gilt arms at center, decorated ribbed spine, gilt edges. Contemporary binding attributable to Boyet.

157 x 97 mm.

Boccace, Jean. Contes et Nouvelles de Boccace, florentin.

Traduction libre, accommodée au goût de ce temps & enrichi de figures en taille-douce gravées par M. Romain de Hooghe.

Amsterdam, George Gallet, 1697.

First rare and precious edition of Boccace’s Tales adorned with a frontispece in first state and 1oo half-page plates composed and etched by Romain de Hooghe.

He was the nephew of Peter de Hooch. He first worked in Amsterdam then in Haarlem. He went to Paris in 1662 invited by van der Meulen. He worked there for a long time and received in 1675 his letters of nobility from the Polish king John Sobieski. In 1683, he is mentioned as a member of the Brotherhood of The Hague. He returned to Haarlem in 1687 and does not appear to have left the city from that date. Very original artist, full of verve, he was especially remarkable as engraver. He has engraved mythological subjects, portraits, history subjects and landscapes. The Amsterdam Museum keeps an allegorical composition of him.

« His versatile artistic talent is also apparent from his sculptures, paintings and ornamental, etched, goblets. Romeyn's etchings were, for the larger part, done on order for publishers, printers and authors, which shows a definite mercantile trait in his character. His good educational background is also illustrated by the fact that he dealt, almost exclusively, with interesting and influential people. No wonder then that he also loved the world of books.

Romeyn de Hooghe's first book illustration is dated 1667, when Constantijn Huygens - poet, statesman, and a faithful servant to the House of Orange - commissioned him to do an etching of the 'Zeestraet', which Huygens had designed as a (still existing) main road from The Hague to Scheveningen. Shortly after De Hooghe had travelled to Paris, where he witnessed the arrival of Charles II of England at Saint Germain-en-Laye, and the Baptism of the Dauphin, he made the acquaintance of Sebastian de Beaulieu, who was engaged in the production of a topographical work on the Spanish (i.e. Southern) Netherlands. For him he etched four frontispieces, allegorical like all his later ones. These were usually explained by a 'Verklaringe der Tytul-prent', and were meant to contain a sort of symbolical quintessence of the books they preceded.

In Paris he also designed the frontispiece of the first book he illustrated, which is by no coincidence an emblem book, since this kind of literature was very much en vogue at that time, and at the same time a challenge to the artist's fantasy. The other designs for Het Voorhof der Ziele (1667) he probably made in Holland, as one is a faithful topographical view of the port of Rotterdam. Soon after he finished this book he was commissioned by Ioannes Hessius, a publisher at Paderborn, to engrave topographical views after the designs of J. G. Rudolphi. Blaeu ordered a frontispiece to Hugo Grotius's De jure belli ac pacis (1670).

So far De Hooghe had illustrated life in all its reality, but this should not be taken to mean that he was only a realist : after the 1672 war was over his inquisitive mind turned towards the 'twilight zone', - where fantasy is the only welcome guest. He etched unicorns, phantoms and ghosts, occult phenomena and peculiar ceremonies of natives in far-away countries, oracles and sibyls. A glimpse of his fanciful mind is seen in his illustrations to the Scriptures, particularly so in the Apocalypse. His remark that the Apocalypse was conceived by Saint John in his dreams was one of the accusations of blasphemy made against him during the court case in 1690.

De Hooghe also depicted human nature : its peculiarities in the Capricci, and fashion and sexual behaviour in the Contes & Nouvelles of Boccaccio and other authors, its activities in his etchings of crafts, like for instance those of the sculptor, the painter, the engraver, and the men working at the Academy of Art.

De Hooghe bas executed more works than are known today. He was more famous in his own day than he is in ours.” John Landwehr.

A remarkable copy bound in contemporary morocco with the arms ofSamuel Bernard (1651-1739).

Samuel Bernard, son of Samuel, painter and engraver, was one of the most famous courtiers enriched under the ministry of Chamillard; his fortune was prodigious and he made a noble use of it; he also lent considerable sums to Louis XIV and Louis XV. He was ennobled and obtained in 1720 the erection of his seigneury of Coubert, in Brie. He died a state councillor on 28 January 1739. Samuel Bernard had married twice: the first with Madeleine Clergeau and the second on 13 August 1720 with Pauline-Félicité de Saint-Chamans.