Oeuvres de Jean Racine
Paris: Pierre Didot l'aîné, an IX (1801) [- 1805]
ÉDITION DU LOUVRE. Three volumes, grand folio format (51 x 37 cm overall, the pages 49.5 x 35.2 cm), bound in fours. No. 48 of 250 sets, signed and numbered by Pierre Didot l'aîné on the colophon, this set one of 100 with the plates before letters. Frontispiece and 56 text engravings after Prud’hon, Moitte, Gérard, Girodet, Taunay, Chaudet, Serangeli and Peyron, each full-page hors texte in both the before-letters state and the lettered state (thus 114 plates altogether). Exceptional bindings signed Canape R.D. (gilt stamp lower front dentelles), dated 1912 (on lower rear dentelle of first volume), in full long-grained cherry-red morocco, the covers elaborately framed in gilt with an alternating sequence of thin and bold, straight and twisted rules and a wide roulette, corner tools of stylized flowers, spines with five raised and tooled bands, finely decorated in the compartments, four compartments with rules framing a floral medallion, the second and third compartments with framed title and volume, edges of the covers gilt-tooled in the corners, dentelles gilt with a wide scrolling roulette, green watered silk doublures, silk page marker ribbons. Repaired scratch on cover volume 1 (possibly original imperfection), a few scattered scuffs and rubs on the bindings, overall negligible, faint to mild offsetting of plates onto facing text pages, faint offsetting from marker ribbons, otherwise an exceptionally fine set, the pages very bright, the plates glowing.
Collation:
Vol. 1: [1 l.] (free doublure and blank), [2 ll.], 1 l. (half-title), 1
l. (frontispiece, lettered state), 1 l. (frontispiece, before-letters state),
1 l. (title), 1 l. (dedication to Bonaparte), 1. l. (printer's introduction),
pp. (1)-466, 1 l. (table recto, colophon verso), [2 ll.], [1 l.] (blank
and free doublure), plus 23 ll. plates in before-letters state and 23 ll.
plates in lettered state: 5 after Moitte for La Thébaïde,
5 after Gérard for Alexandre, 5 after Girodet for Andromaque,
3 after Taunay for Les Plaideurs, 5 after Chaudet for Britannicus.
Vol. 2: [1 l.] (free doublure and blank), [2 ll.], 1 l. (half-title), 1
l. (title), pp. (1)-500, 1 l. (table recto), [3 ll.], [1 l.] (blank and
free doublure), plus 25 ll. plates in before-letters state and 25 ll. plates
in lettered state: 5 after Serangeli for Bérénice,
5 after Gérard for Bajazet, 5 after Peyron for Mithridate,
5 after Gérard for Iphigénie, 5 after Girodet for
Phedre.
Vol. 3: [1 l.] (free doublure and blank), [2 ll.], 1 l. (half-title), 1
l. (title), pp. (1)-413, [1 p.], 415-6 (table), [2 ll.], [1 l.] (blank and
free doublure), plus 8 ll. plates in before-letters state and 8 ll. plates
in lettered state: 3 after Chaudet for Esther, 5 after Chaudet
for Athalie.
The large folio Oeuvres of Racine, apex of Pierre Didot's career, printed while his presses were installed in the Louvre "à titre d'artiste" during the Consulate, were presented to Bonaparte First Consul as an achievement in arts comparable to the General's in arms. The choice of Racine, the selection of illustrators, the production of the physical books and the rigorous exactitude of the scholarship, all undergirded Didot's heroic purpose "d'élever à la gloire de Racine un monument typographique que devînt pour ainsi dire national." Didot's conviction that he had raised a national typographical monument (Brunet: "un des livres les plus magnifiques que la typographie d'aucun pays eut encore produits") was confirmed in 1806, the year after completion of publication, as the Jury de l'Exposition des produits de l'industrie française deemed the set "le chef-d'oeuvre de la typographie de tous les temps et de tous les âges" (Jammes, op. cit., no. 96, p. 46). For Didot and his countrymen, Jean Racine was the towering classical author of the age, who continued in a modern way, immersed in the thought and sensibilities of France, the achievement of Euripedes and Sophocles. And these authors were best appreciated in the contemplation of their pages, "la simple majesté de leur génie," the moderns illustrated and interpreted by the ancients: "Imaginois-nous que les ombres de ces grandes hommes sont présentes à nos assemblées.... Evoquons sans crainte ces ombres illustrés" (Jean de la Harp, quoted in Osborne, op. cit., p. 115-6). Thus La Harpe paints with words the image of Prud'hon's sublime frontispiece to the Oeuvres, the apotheosis of Racine, "Son Génie et Melpomene le menent à l'Immortalité," flanked by an array of the busts of Euripedes, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Menander and others. Besides Prud'hon, apparently first originally among the artists for the Oeuvres but later outmaneuvered by David, Didot commissioned Girodet, Gérard and Chaudet (in the first rank) and also Moitte, Taunay, Serangeli and Peyron to create a new illustration based not on melodramatic antecedents but on an actual appreciation of the inherent human drama of the written work. (A complete list of the plates is available.) Girodet, for example, shows the death of Hippolyte (Phedre, Act V Scene VII) not as Poussin's plummeting chariot but as the effect on the expiring Phedre, all attention drawn to the emotive surrender of her face and her body. The edition was printed on the papier vélin ("vellum paper") of Montgolier d'Ardonnay, "artiste justement célèbre," having an extraordinary brightness and smoothness, in the fonts of Firmin Didot, struck with meticulous passion out of silver enchased in iron, exceptional and perhaps unique in the history of printing (Jammes, op. cit., p. 28). The simple classical elegance of the mise-en-page and the depth of bibliographical exactitude are, of course, Pierre Didot's own.
This set is clad in the superb dated bindings of George Canape (1864-1940), almost perfectly preserved. After the unique vellum copy, presented by a grateful Pierre Didot to his brother and collaborator Firmin and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the edition is justified at 100 sets with the plates in before-letters state and an additional 150 sets with the plates in lettered state. The Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library possesses copy no. 79 in contemporary binding by Bradel with the Napoleonic eagle centered on the covers, which, similarly to copy no. 61 at the Morgan Library, has the 56 before-letters engravings after the frontispiece placed one each at the beginning of each act (and no lettered-state plates). The present set, by contrast, has both states of every engraving; the lettered state prefaces each act, and the before-letters state is placed in the scene to which it pertains. No other such set with both states of the plates has been located. (Indeed, Didot's prospectus, before differentiating the issue into sets with before-letters plates or lettered plates, states: "Chacune des pièces affira une estampe pour chaque acte, ce qui fera monter la totalité à cinquante-sept...." Jacob, op. cit., p. 14.) This set lacks the tissue guards present in the Spencer copy, an expected bibliophilic feature of the assemblage of connoisseur's editions at the time (Griffiths, op. cit., p. 105). Canape did not use tissue guards, and it is not clear whether their lack might indicate a later assemblage of plates and text. A proportionately large number of sets were still in the Didots' possession in mid-century, doubtless because of the daunting cost of purchasing a set, its inconvenient grandeur and the revolutionary turmoil during the genesis of the project commenced in An 1. (This number was reduced by dealers breaking up sets for plates.) In any event, the present set, with faint to mild offsetting of plates onto facing text pages, hardly a defect, is very bright and, unlike the Spencer copy, is almost devoid of even the slightest foxing. Sets have now become very rare, and this set, in its stunning bindings and with its shining paper and double sets of glowing plates, is extraordinary.
References:
Griffiths, Antony. Prints for Books: Book Illustration in France, 1760-1800. London, The British Library, 2004.
Jacob, P.-L., dit le Bibliophile [Paul Lacroix]. "Notice historique
sur l'édition de Racine dite du Louvre et sur ses estampes,"
November 1, 1876, in Collection des cinquante-sept estampes dessinées
et gravées pour les oeuvres de J. Racine; édition du Louvre...,
Paris: Willem, 1877.
Jammes, André. Les Didot: trois siècles de typographie
et de bibliophile, 1698-1998 / catalogue par André Jammes; avec le
concours de Françoise Courbage. Paris: Agence culturelle de
Paris, 1998.
[Cited by Jammes:
Firmin-Didot, Ambroise. Essai sur la typographie. Paris: Firmin-Didot
frères, 1852.]
Osborne, Carol Margot. Pierre Didot the Elder and French book illustration, 1789-1822. New York: Garland Pub., 1985.
Ray, Gordon N. The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700 to 1914.
New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1982. Vol. I, pp. 120-8 and no. 72,
pp. 122-6.
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