Estimate: $800 - $1,200
Auction: February 18, 2021 10:00:00 AM EDT
Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1773. First edition. 4to. xi, (i), 55, (1) pp. Illustrated with engraved frontispiece and 44 engraved plates by Pierre Aveline after drawings by Rubens. Three-quarter tan calf over marbled paper-covered boards, paper spine label, extremities rubbed and worn, boards rubbed; all edges trimmed; old ownership signature on front free endpaper; dampstaining in top gutter of recto and verso of frontispiece and recto of half-title; scattered minor spotting and soiling to text and plates; book-plate on front paste-down; book-plate of English art historian, Rubens scholar, and director of the The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Michael Jaffe, on front paste-down. Brunet IV, 1442.
First edition of this translation of Rubens' unpublished manuscript Super Figura Humana Discursus Cabbalisticus, left in the artist's studio following his death in 1640. Jombert's version, long thought to be misleading due to its inaccurate editing and incorporation of images taken from Leonardo, has recently been re-examined and vindicated as an important and unjustly overlooked source for the aesthetic and philosophical opinions of the artist.