Four bindings decorated by a remarkable gilt and polychrome plaque featuring frontal and profile views of native Americans are known. The subject at the top of the panel wears a headdress with exaggerated horns, garlanded by a basket of fruit. Two (at sides), are shown grimacing, wearing feathered skullcaps. A fourth figure (centre), of uncertain sex, is depicted costumed with either a horned headdress, or a crescent crown. The design is balanced (bottom) by the head of an ox.

These appear to be stereotyped images of Amerindians; however, it is just possible that they are based on empirical evidence. Jacques Cartier had returned from his first voyage to the New World (April-September 1534) with two Iroquoians, Domagaya and Taignoagny, sons of the Native chief Donnacona. In May 1535, Cartier set sail for a second voyage, guided by Domagaya and Taignoagny, who had learned some French. When he was ready to return to France, Cartier seized ten Iroquoians, including Donnacona, his two sons, a little girl of 10 or 12 years of age, and two little boys. Cartier arrived in Saint-Malo on 15 July 1536, and, according to contemporary accounts, the Iroquoians were paraded through the streets as exotic novelties. Donnacona appeared before a notary for questioning, met with François I, to whom he related spurious tales of gold, silver mines, and spices, and in return received a pension and residence from the French crown. Three Iroquoians were baptised in Saint-Malo on 25 March 1538, perhaps because they were in failing health. All would die in France of disease, with the exception of the little girl, who returned to New France on Cartier’s third voyage.

Images of native Americans appeared simultaneously in other decorative arts, notably an iron mask (170 x 150mm) of a native American wearing a headdress and cannibalistic leer, made for the Château d’Écouen ca 1535-1555 (Musée national de la Renaissance, ECL22115; image, link). The royal entry in 1550 of Henri II in the city of Rouen, which included fifty Brazilians imported by a merchant of Lyon, their lips, ears and cheeks pierced by white and green polished stones, was also reflected in the decorative arts.

The volumes in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana and Bibliothèques municipales de Versailles are painted with the same colours, albeit some reversed (the faces of the two Indians seen in profile are red and their headdresses green or blue on the volume at Versailles; on the Bibliotheca Brookeriana volume these colours are reversed). On both bindings, white is applied on the face of the figure in the centre, on fruit, and on fabric draped over the bull’s horns. Only traces survive of the polychrome on the Collenuccio. No image is available to us of the volume in the Bibliothèque Mazarine.

list of bindings

(1) Appianus Alexandrinus, Appian Alexandrin, historien grec, Des Guerres des Rommains, Livres XI (Paris: René Avril, 1552)

provenance
● unidentified owner, inscription “Le Perandtion… (?) Joh. & Fr iiiii et vclxxix” on pastedown (16C)
● unidentified owner, inscription “xii oriliers erotont? tant grand que petit” on pastedown
● unidentified owner(s), inscriptions “Denos” and “La france Ecclésiastique” on pastedown
● unidentified owner, inscription “No. 396” on verso of endleaf
● Stanislas Machoïr, François Bailly & Bernard Clavreuil, Bibliothèque d’un amateur et à divers: Voyages; atlas; histoire, généologie, Versailles, 7 November 1993, lot 140 (estimate FF 100,000-120,000)
● Rossignol, Paris, 1996
● T. Kimball Brooker (purchased from the above, 1996) [Bibliotheca Brookeriana ID #2265]
● Sotheby’s, Bibliotheca Brookeriana: A Renaissance Library, Magnificent Books and Bindings, New York, 11 October 2023, lot 4 [link]
● Nina Musinsky, New York - bought in sale ($50,800)
● Washington, DC, Folger Library, 272775 (opac [link])


(2) Pandolfolink Collenuccio, Sommaire des histoires du royaume de Naples : qui traicte de toutes choses advenues en iceluy, ou es pais de sa dependence, des le temps d’Auguste Cesar : et par lequel on peut congnoistre clairement les raisons de ceulx qui par cy devant l’ont querelé. : Composé premierement en langage italien par M. Pandolfo Collenucio, & depuis n’agueres mis en françois par Denis Sauvage (Paris: Gilles Corrozet & Arnoul L’Angelier, 1546)

provenance
● Louis-Alexandre Barbet (1850-1931)
● Henri Baudoin, Maurice Ader & Librairie Giraud-Badin, Bibliothèque de feu M. L.-A. Barbet, Première partie, Paris, 13-14 June 1932, lot 69 (“exemplaire réglé, dans une très curieuse reliure de l’époque, dont les plats sont ornes de diverses tête humaines et d’une tête de bœuf” [link])
● unidentified owner - bought in sale (FF 2800)
● Audap Mirabaud & Christian Galantaris, Précieux livres anciens, illustrés modernes, voyages, littérature, livres aux armes, Paris, 17 June 2010, lot 39
● unidentified owner - bought in sale (€6000)

literature
Exposition des livres d’étrennes au Cercle de la Librairie. 1936-1937 (Paris [1936]) [copy cited in Boinet’s review of this exhibition, in La Bibliofilía 39, 1937, p.65]


(3) Marsilio Ficino, Le commentaire de Marsille Ficin, Florentin: sur le Banquet d’amour de Platon: faict françois par Symon Silvius, dit J. de La Haye, valet de chambre de treschrestienne princesse Marguerite de France, royne de Navarre (Poitiers: Jean & Enguilbert de Marnef, 1546)

provenance
● “Mention ms d’une écriture du 17e siècle ‘A l’usage du P. Augustin Louvel’” (opac)
● “ex-libris ms ‘Ex bibliotheca augustiniana minoris conventus parisiensis’ du couvent des Petits-Augustins de Paris (p. de titre)” (opac)
● unidentified owner, “écriture du 16e siècle ‘Usui fr. … Molinier’ [p. de titre]” (opac)
● Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, 8° 55171 Res (opac Reliure du 16e siècle à plaque dorée et mosaïquée avec des visages de “Peaux-Rouges” [link])

literature
Maurice Piquard, Reliures du XVIe siècle à la Bibliothèque Mazarine: catalogue de l’exposition organisée à la Bibliothèque Mazarine, juin 1976 (Paris [1976]), no. 81


(4) Heures à l’usage de Paris, toutes au long sans rien requérir (Paris: Yolande Bonhomme, 1551), bound with: Les recommandaces des trespassez (Paris: Yolande Bonhomme, 1549, bound with: La Patenostre que Nostre Seigneur Jesuchrist feist (s.l., s.n., s.d. [1558])

provenance
● unidentified owner, “Adam du Chatelier, prêtre et pasteur” (Lefuel)
● Couvent royal de Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Lefuel)
● “le livre appartint à l’Evêché de Versailles dont il porte le timbre servant d’ex-libris” (Lefuel)
● Versailles, Bibliothèque Centrale, Réserve C 240 (opac “Exposition JEP 2019 (Trésors de la bibliothèque)” [link, link])

literature
Hector-Martin Lefuel, Une reliure parisienne du XVI siècle à décor de Peaux-Rouges (Paris 1924) [extracted from Archives de la Société française des collectionneurs d’ex-libris et de reliures artistiques, June 1924; reprinted: Byblis 15 (automne 1925)]
Monique De la Roncière, “Documents uniques sur l’histoire du Québec” in Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 21 (1967), pp.118-124 (p.119 no. 7: “Reliure XVIe s. à décor de Peaux-Rouges”) [link]
Jean-Michel Roideau, in Musée du Québec, La Renaissance et le Nouveau Monde (Québec 1984), p.124 no. 47 & Colour Pl. 11 (“Reliure de veau brun à plaques dorées au décor de Peaux-rouges”)
Bibliothèques municipales de Versailles, “Trésors et curiosités de la bibliothèque”, Journées Européennes du Patrimoine, [exhibition in] Galerie de l’ancien Hôtel des Affaires Étrangères et de la Marine, 21-22 septembre 2019