Pétrarque :

Paris: Gazette des beaux-arts, 1902. First edition. Leather. Very Good. 39 cm; viii, 290 pages, and 21 leaves of plates. Numerous illustrations in text. Edition limited to 260 copies, this copy out of series, "exemplaire spécialment tiré pour Monsieur Charles Éphrussi." Bound in recent half calf, polished, over pebbled cloth-covered boards. Gilt-tooled borders, ornaments and title. Gauffered edges. Few superficial chips along joints and at spine ends. Plates variously foxed, mostly in margins. Text clean.

Vast--and vastly influential--study of the iconography of Petrarch's song cycles, The Triumphs (Trionfi) and the song book of "scattered rhymes" (Il Canzoniere). The essay was a collaboration between the art historian Eugène Müntz and the wealthy collector and amateur scholar Victor Masséna. The result is a luxurious book that was indispensible in the formation of the discipline of iconology. This copy is out of series, and in place of the justification page is a printed dedication to Charles Ephrussi, the patron of arts who effectively launched Renoir's career, and was a great supporter of Degas, Manet, Monet, and Proust.