La Sainte Bible - 1874

Folio edition of the Sainte Bible published by Alfred Mame in Tours in 1874, one of the most spectacular achievements of French Catholic publishing in the 19th century, and one of the peaks of Gustave Doré’s biblical art (1832‑1883).

Doré, a prolific engraver, painter, and illustrator, established himself in his time with his images for The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, or Rabelais, in a climate of late Romanticism and spectacular religious imagery that perfectly suited a luxury Bible. Alongside him, the Tours-based publisher Alfred Mame (1811‑1893), a true industrialist of Catholic publishing, implemented in Tours a modern tooling and a quasi-manufacturing organization, serving a program of “texts conforming to doctrine,” of which this Bible is its prestigious flagship. Doré draws from the entire sacred narrative—Creation, the Flood, patriarchs, episodes of the Exodus, the history of the kings, the prophets, the life of Christ, and the Apocalypse—favoring spectacular or pathetic moments, which yields images that have become iconic, such as “God separating the light from the darkness” or “Lot’s flight.”

The 1874 edition reprises the grand “Holy Bible, a new translation according to the Vulgate” by the Tours canon J.-J. Bourassé (1813‑1872) and P. Janvier, approved by the Archbishop of Tours and presented as a scholarly and reliable alternative to the Lemaistre de Sacy translation. The work is presented in two large folio volumes of 909 and 948 pages, in red publisher’s cloth with gilt on the spine and covers, and illustrated with about 230 large plates hors texte, to which are added numerous vignettes, tailpieces, and initial capitals drawn notably by H. Giacomelli (1829‑1906), which constitute a genuine “imaginary museum” of biblical scenes.

Overall, the condition is average due to the state of the bindings, necessarily weakened by their weight and size: the bindings are rubbed and worn with fabric losses here and there, they bear ink traces, pasted-on vignettes on the endpapers, rare foxing and other minor defects."