[CHASSE] ARCUSSIA (Charles d').

Lot 219
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4000 - 5000 EUR
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[CHASSE] ARCUSSIA (Charles d').
Falconry, divided into three books. Aix : Jean Tholosan, 1598. Small in-4 (185 x 118 mm), 272-(7) pages. Contemporary soft vellum, modern brown chagrin slipcase. Handwritten bookplate on the title: "Celestinorum de Avinione 1720" (Celestines of Avignon). Very rare first edition of one of the greatest French treatises of falconry or hunting in flight, dedicated to Henri IV. It is illustrated with 11 full-page woodcuts of birds and a small portrait of Henri IV on the back of the title. "It is a most rare book" (Thiébaud 27-28). "The work is much esteemed on account of its originality and the amount of information which it contains" (Harting 153). Charles d'Arucussia, "famous thereuticographer, came from an ancient and illustrious house of Provence. His ancestors included Elisée d'Arcussia, Count of Caprée, general of the galleys of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and author of a Latin treatise on falconry, which has remained in manuscript. Charles was born in 1547, according to all appearances, at the castle of Esparron. [...] At the age of eighteen, he visited the main courts of Italy, and then appeared at the French court, where he was noticed not only for his wit but also for his skill in physical exercises. Having married in 1572, he retired to the land of Esparron, where he divided his leisure time between study and falcon hunting, for which he had been passionate from the beginning. [...] A rather important lawsuit obliged him, as he himself tells us, to temporarily fix his residence in Aix: deprived of the pleasure of hunting, he wanted to console himself by writing down the observations that an experience of more than thirty years had put him in a position to make on the different species of falcons, on the way of raising them, of correcting them of their defects, of taking care of them in their diseases; and such is the origin of the Falconry of d'Arcussia..." (Michaud). (Michaud).(Title partially restored and scratched with a few words of the quatrain under the portrait of Henry VI completed in ink, a few rusty leaves and marginal or angular spotting.)Nissen IVB 35; Thiébaud 27-28; Souhart 22; Brunet I, 389. some leaves).
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