PICART, Bernard (artist).
Histoire générale des cérémonies, moeurs, et coutumes religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde. Représentees en 243. figures dessinées de la main de Bernard Picard: avec des explications historiques, & curieuses; par M. l'Abbé Banier [...] & par M. l'Abbé Le Mascrier.
Paris, Rollin Fils, 1741.
Picart 'earned a place in the history of Jewish art by his realistic portrayal of Jewish religious rites. These constitute an invaluable record of Dutch Jewry in the early eighteenth century... [He] sought out Jews in the synagogue and in their homes in order to acquaint himself with their ceremonies. In his picture of a Passover celebration the artist himself can be seen, hatless, participating in a meal.' (Ency. Judaica, 13, 498). Other volumes cover Islam, the Americas, the Quakers and Hinduism in detail.
Despite condemnation from the Catholic church, the publication of this work was a resounding success. 'Ceremonies and customs prepared the ground for religious toleration amid seemingly unending religious conflict, and demonstrated the impact of the global on Western consciousness [...] as it shaped the development of a modern, secular understanding of religion' (Hunt)
The present second edition is the first published in France (after Amsterdam), with a text much corrected and sometimes fully rewritten by Lemascrier, who is also the author of a group of dissertations on the same subject, included here for the first time.
7 vols, folio (27 x 40 cm). Engraved frontispiece complete with 232 engraved plates including 32 folding, and 95 engravings in text, including head and tail pieces by Gravelot, titles printed in red and black with a repeated engraved vignette by Cochin; outer margin of 3 leaves in vol. 2 sometime reinforced. Contemporary calf, spines with raised bands gilt in compartments, red and orange morocco labels lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, red egdes; neat restoration to joints and head and foot of spines.
Brunet I, 1743; Sabin 4931; Cf. L. Hunt, The Book that Changed Europe: Picart & Bernard's Religious Ceremonies of the World (Harvard UP, 2010).
Stock code 90296
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Histoire générale des cérémonies, moeurs, et coutumes religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde.
ARISTEAS of Marmora; DONE, John (translator).
[Letter of Aristeas].
[1633].
The scarce first edition in English of the Letter of Aristeas, the earliest account of the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, which contains the first mention of the library of Alexandria
$1,720.00
[GENEVA VERSION]; STERNHOLD & HOPKINS (Psalmes).
The Bible.
1589.
A handsome sixteeth-century edition of the Geneva Bible, finely bound in eighteenth-century gilt-panelled calf, without the Concordance, but with the Booke of Common Prayer and metrical Psalmes
$11,006.00
