Leonard de Vinci. Textes choisis. Pensées, théories, préceptes, fables et facéties. Traduits dans leur ensemble pour la première fois d'après les manuscrits originaux et mis en ordre méthodique avec une introduction par PELADAN. Avec un portrait et XXXI facsimilés.
Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1907. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 384pp. Contemporary binder's quarter leather: maroon leather spine over patterned paper boards with gilt-stamped title between raised bands. Original wrappers bound-in (most French books of the period were issued in wrappers with the idea that the purchaser would have them bound to their choice as hardcovers.) Marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. Frontispiece. FRENCH TEXT. INSCRIBED by THE AUTHOR on the titel-page "A Armand Dayot." This was presumably Armand Dayot (1851 – 1934), the French art critic, art historian and leftist politician. The text is best described by the title: "Leonardo DeVinci. Selected texts. Thoughts, theories, precepts, fables and pranks. Translated as a whole for the first time from the original manuscripts and put in methodical order with an introduction by PELADAN. With a portrait and XXXI facsimiles." Joséphin Péladan (1858-1918) was a well-known French writer, Martinist and occultist, co-founder, in 1888, with Stanislas de Guaita, of the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix, which Péladan later left, founding and heading his own Ordre du Temple de la Rose + Croix, from which blossomed the important showcase for Symbolist art the Salon de la Rose + Croix. Spine darkened and a little rubbed, folds lightly rubbed. Letters "MF" in tiny perforation in upper title-page, a small tear and a few chips to the fore-edge of the half-title page, fore-edge margins of pages somewhat darkened. Still a tight, clean VG+ copy of an unusual, inscribed work. Item #72593
Price: $250.00