[Reliure signée Devauchelle; Provenance famille Cointreau] Rabelais - Œuvres - 1605

RABELAIS, François
The Works of M. François Rabelais, Doctor of Medicine. Containing five books of the life, deeds, and heroic sayings of Gargantua, and his son Pantagruel...In Antwerp, by Jean Fuet, 1605.

One volume in-16 (the era pocket format), art binding signed DEVAUCHELLE in full ivory parchment, plain covers, spine entirely gilt with a wealth of motifs of semi-roulettes and Renaissance fleurons, title piece in brown morocco titled and dated in fine gold (Œuvres de Rabelais 1605), edges gilt on antique gilding.

Exceptional provenance: Binding signed Devauchelle (stamped at the head of the pastedown), the work of the famous Parisian master binder Alain Devauchelle.
And ex-libris engraved from the prestigious collection of Max Cointreau (family of the famous liqueur distillers and great bibliophiles with gourmand tastes).

Illustrated by the mythical engravable calligram carved in copperplate by La Dive Bouteille (Book V, Chapter XLV). Contains at the end of the work handwritten annotations from the period on the verso of a leaf (the “Epitaph of the famous Rabelais…”).

An absolutely collectible piece bringing together under the same boards a monument of French literature, a rare Antwerp edition from the early seventeenth century, an illustrious provenance, and the signature of one of the greatest French master binders of the twentieth century.
This Antwerp impression of 1605 by Jean Fuet gathers the five books of Gargantua and Pantagruel. It houses the famous engraved figure of the “Dive Bottle,” one of the oldest and most precious calligrams of French typography.

Dressed in luxurious parchment by Devauchelle whose gold tooling on the spine is of breathtaking virtuosity, this copy once belonged to the legendary Max Cointreau library. The Cointreau dynasty’s passion for the art of living and for Rabelaisian erudition is magnificently embodied in this pièce d’actualité of impeccable freshness.

The calligram of the “Dive Bottle” (“O Bouteille pleine toute de mystère…”) constitutes the culmination of Panurge and Pantagruel’s initiatory quest. Arriving at the temple of Bacchus after a long sea voyage, the heroes consult the Oracle, whose verdict is a single divine word spoken by the flask: “TRINCH!” (Drink!). Rabelais thus sums up his entire humanist philosophy: the joyous alteration of the mind through knowledge, wine, and freedom of thought. That such an exemplar should have belonged to the great master of liqueurs, Max Cointreau, is simply a perfect historical and bibliophilic coincidence.