Beschreibung:

GUEROULT, Guillaume (d. c.1570). La description forme et nature des bestes tant privees que Sauvages . [ Bound with :] -- Le Blason et description des Oyseaux . Rouen: Robert Masselin for Robert & Jean du Gort, 1554.
GUEROULT, Guillaume (d. c.1570). La description forme et nature des bestes tant privees que Sauvages . [ Bound with :] -- Le Blason et description des Oyseaux . Rouen: Robert Masselin for Robert & Jean du Gort, 1554. 2 works in one volume, 16° (106 x 73mm). First work with wood-engraved title vignette and 53 illustrations in the text, the second with wood-engraved title vignette and 54 illustrations in the text. (Faint even browning throughout.) Blue morocco by Trautz-Bauzonnet, gilt fleuron centrepiece on covers, gilt spine with raised bands, gilt inner dentelles, gilt edges. Provenance : Comte de Fresne (booklabel, binding probably made for him) -- Paris, Drouot, 13-18 March 1893, no. 221 -- Henri Gallice (bookplate) -- Marcel Jeanson (bookplate, sold at his sale Sotheby's Monaco 1 March 1987, lot 279). THE 16TH-CENTURY RE-DISCOVERY OF NATURAL HISTORY COMBINED WITH POETRY AND ILLUSTRATED WITH CHARMING WOODCUTS. THIRD EDITION OF BOTH WORKS, EXTREMELY RARE. These small collections , of a genre somewhere between fables and books of emblems, gained in popularity from the 1550s, and, while often found together, also circulated separately, as their early editions indicate. Both works were first published in 1549 by Balthazar Arnoullet at Lyons (the first work under the title Decades de la description forme et vertu naturelle du animaulx ); the second edition of the first work was again published at Lyons but the second edition of the Blazon des Oiseaux was printed at Rouen by the widow of Jean Petit at Robert et Jean du Gort in 1553; and they appeared at the same press again for the third edition here. The first work starts with the creation of man and woman and goes on to list land-animals, mostly mammals, in no specific order, but tending from large to small. The only fantastical animal is the griffon at the beginning. Generally, the structure of the text resembles that of the medieval bestiary. Each section starts with a striking woodcut, followed by a rhymed blason of the appearance of the given animal, and then goes on to describe its features, behaviour and other characteristics, sometimes also giving the etymology of the animal's name. The delicate woodcuts in the first book are apparently by two different hands and they differ in size and refinement. The second work limits the description of the birds to the rhymed blason that also refers to a woodcut. Both texts are very rare, hardly even featuring in discussions of Guillaume Guéroult's œuvre . However, they mirror his interest in animals, fables and emblems as means to explain and interpret the visible world in order to illuminate human behaviour. Of this edition of the Blason des Oiseaux, USTC LISTS ONLY ONE COPY (Bodleian).