Miracula et Beneficia SS. Rosario Virginis Matris a Deo Opt. Max Collata. Paris: Thomas de Leu, 1611.
Small folio (241 x 164 mm). [1], 15 leaves. Entirely engraved: title and 15 full-page engravings after Theodoor Galle, including engraved text below images (platemarks 174/176 x 111 mm.), all within ornamental borders engraved in the plate, plates 1, 2, 5 and 8 signed Thomas de Leu excudit. Small squarish fleur-de-lis watermarks (not in Gaudriault or Heawood but other similar marks dated to ca. 1611 and 1615: Gaudriault 636-637). (Trace of old vertical fold along leaves just within the platemarks, one tiny stain overlapping lower platemark of title.) Early 20th-century mottled sheep-backed boards, red morocco gilt lettering-piece on spine, speckled edges (acidic endpapers).***
Rarissime First French Edition of this suite of Rosary engravings, copied from the suite by Theodoor Galle published by Plantin the previous year. Now far scarcer than their Flemish originals, such early 17th-century Parisian copies are significant witnesses to a surge in French copperplate production, inspired by the immigration of Flemish engravers, and resulting in the undercutting of the Flemish printmakers themselves in the lucrative international and particularly Spanish market for popular religious imagery.
The engravings and their texts celebrate the 15 miracles of the Rosary. The edition is a direct copy of the Plantin / Galle edition of 1610, which was independently published but could also be acquired along with Plantin’s 1610 edition of Vincent Hensbergh’s Wonderlijcke schoone gratien ende mirakelen. De Leu (or his anonymous engraver) copied Galle’s images and text faithfully, changing only the dedicatee from Isabella Clara Eugenia, Spanish sovereign of the Netherlands, to the French Queen Regent Marie de Medicis, and adding ornamental borders to the engravings. On the title (often copied in later Rosary works), St. Dominic and Alan de la Roche water a giant rose bush, whose symmetrically curved double branches enclose 15 miniature scenes of the miracles, while the Holy Dove flies above and angels and devils tend to their respective multitudes.
Each engraving shows at least two and often more scenes, including historical events, which are letter-keyed to the texts at the foot. Eight engravings depict Dominicans. The sources of the texts are cited. Most are excerpts from writings of the Venetian Dominican Alberto da Castello, above all his influential Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria (1st edition 1521); the other sources include Serafino Razzi’s Giardino d'essempi, overo Fiori delle vite de i santi (1599), Dominican chronicles of Johannes de Monte and “Thom. de Templo,” and (the final engraving) Gregory XIII’s 1573 papal bull, changing the name of the feast day of October 7th, established in 1571 to honor the victory over the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto, from “Our Lady of Victory” to “Our Lady of the Rosary.” This engraving shows the sea battle in the background of a celebratory procession.
Thomas de Leu (ca. 1555-1611 or 1612) was one of several Flemish engraver-publishers who emigrated to France in the late sixteenth century, fleeing political troubles following the Spanish sack of Antwerp, and bringing with them the use of copperplate engraving for the production of religious and other popular imagery, previously produced xylographically in France. The entire Parisian print trade soon jumped on the copperplate bandwagon. Besides the French provincial market, there existed a large international and especially Spanish market for religious prints. The principal sources of imagery for these Paris-produced religious engravings, most of which were consumed and are now lost, were Flemish engraved suites, their style and content being simply the most “in vogue” (although any iconographic material that seemed to promise commercial success was fair game to these enterprising imagiers). Cheaper than the Flemish originals, French copies were produced in vast quantities and exported: thus these often Flanders-born Parisian engraver-publishers came into direct competition with their Flemish counterparts, whose prints they were essentially pirating. (De Leu’s documented connections to the Spanish trade network are cited by Préaud.)
Parisian printmakers often also competed with each other to reproduce the Flemish models. This Rosary suite provides an example: two slightly later Paris editions, with different plates, are recorded, one published by Jean IV Leclerc, 1612, with at least some of the images in reverse, and the other by Nicolas de Mathoniere, [ca. 1620]. I locate one complete copy of each (Leclerc: Bibliothèque du Saulchoir; Mathoniere: Bridwell library).
Copies of the de Leu suite are held by the BnF (the engravings mounted), and the Dominican Bibliothèque du Saulchoir. I locate no copies in American libraries.
This edition described in L'Ordre des Prêcheurs, Estampes dominicaines au XVIIe siècle [online], Rosaire no. 74. On Leu, see Préaud, Dictionnaire des éditeurs d'estampes à Paris sous l'Ancien régime (1990), pp. 220-222. On the Flemish influence on Paris print production, see S. Lepape, "Les éditeurs de la rue Montorgueil et les gravures flamandes: La production des Mathonière," In Monte Artium 3 (2010): 17-33. On the Spanish market for French prints based on Flemish models, see F. Jiméno Solé, "La Rivalité commerciale entre les éditeurs d’estampes Français et Flamands en Espagne : le témoignage de Jusepe Martínez (1669-1677)," In Monte Artium 3 (2010): 69-88. Item #4496
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