Madame de Pompadour’s Portable Atlas adorned with 101 maps in period coloring described under no. 2399 of the “Catalogue des Livres de la bibliothèque de Feue Madame la Marquise de Pompadour,” whose sale took place in 1765.
Precious copy dedicated to King Louis XV and bound for Madame de Pompadour
with lace with butterflies, pieces of armor, and the marquise’s coat of arms.
Provenance: Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764); Simon Mérard de Saint-Just (1749-1812).
Paris, 1759.
Lerouge. Portable atlas for the military and travelers. Volume 2 containing details of Germany reduced from the maps of Homan and Mayer. Dedicated to the King Louis XV. By his very humble, very obedient, and submissive servant Le Rouge, Geographer.
In Paris, at Le Rouge’s, 1759.
In-quarto with 1 double-page title frontispiece, viii pp., 20 pp., (1) leaf of table, 101 double-page colored maps. Red morocco, large gilt lace framing, heraldic towers in corners, coat of arms in the center, smooth spine decorated, gilt interior lace, double gold rule on the cuts, linings and endpapers in painted and gilt paper, gilt edges. Reliure with armory lace of the timee.
231 x 188 mm.
Original edition dedicated to King Louis XV.
In 1756, three years earlier, Le Rouge had published a first part of this atlas dedicated to the “Introduction to Geography” adorned with 91 maps mainly devoted to Europe. Following the success of the enterprise, he decided in 1759 to publish a second volume with 101 double-page maps mainly devoted to Germany. This second volume is usually found alone, but it is rare.
Phillips 618. Except for Schaffhouse, Neuchâtel, and Minorca, this volume contains exclusively maps of German regions, including Ansbach (4), Bamberg, Bayreuth, Braunschweig, Bremen, Darmstadt, Eichstätt, Fulda (2), Giessen, Hanau, Hanover, Harz, Hesse (6), Hildesheim, Holstein, Kassel, Kleve, Limburg, Lüneburg, Mark, Moers, Munster, Paderborn, Rheinpfalz, Speyer, Taunus, Trier, Ulm, Waldeck, Worms, Würzburg, and others, as well as former German regions such as East Prussia and Silesia..
It contains a beautiful double-page title frontispiece, engraved by Thérèse Martinet after François-Nicolas Martinet, une Dissertation on Germany (20 pp.), and 101 double-page maps engraved in intaglio and colored in period.
“I have fixed this second volume at one hundred and one of the most important maps. I used the best maps of Homan, Hafius, Mayer & Seuter, which I reduced as precisely as possible and which I related to modern observations. To give a slight idea of the difficulties I had to overcome, it suffices to assure connoisseurs that I found maps, in which the difference in longitude was three to four degrees. I spared no effort for engraving. I included all the detail that the size of the sheets allowed: I most scrupulously examined corrections two and three times.”
Remarkable copy dedicated to King Louis XV, whose 101 double-page maps were colored at the time, adorned with a superb period morocco binding intended for Madame de Pompadour, decorated with lace with butterflies, with pieces of armor at the corners of the covers and large coat of arms in the center. The volume is described under no. 2399 of Madame de Pompadour’s library catalogue.
Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, duchess-marquis of Pompadour and de Ménars near Blois, lady of Saint-Ouen, daughter of Antoine, first clerk in the offices of the Paris brothers, and of a libertine mother, born in Paris on December 29, 1721. With all the seductive qualities of mind and body, she received a careful education thanks to the protection of her mother’s friend, the financier Le Normand de Tournehem, who made her marry on March 9, 1741, his nephew, Charles-Guillaume le Normand d’Étioles, honorary knight in the presidial of Blois, then general farmer, of whom she was the first wife and to whom she bore a daughter; cold and calculating, she laid her ambition on becoming the mistress of Louis XV; she first had one of the most brilliant salons frequented by her admirers, artists, and writers, then she managed to attract the king’s attention and on April 23, 1745, she was installed at court in the former apartment of Madame de Mailly; immediately created marquise de Pompadour, then appointed lady of the queen’s palace on February 8, 1756, she ruled unopposed over the king and governed France in his name for nineteen years, until her death, despite the constantly renewed intrigues and all sorts of pamphlets showering on her; while it must be acknowledged that she protected arts and letters and founded the Sèvres manufactory, it must also be recognized that her policy and prodigality were detrimental to France. Madame de Pompadour, exhausted by the life of pleasures she had led, died in Versailles on April 15, 1764, aged only 42, leaving all her possessions to her brother the Marquis de Marigny.
Outside of Mr. de Beauchamps’ library, composed solely of dramatic works she had bought in bulk, she had formed a very considerable collection of about 4,000 volumes in all genres, most bound with her arms by Derome, Padeloup, and others; those of them bearing the mention ” Menus plaisirs du roy ” were part of the king’s library, placed in the “small apartment” that the marquise occupied at the Château de Versailles.
The volume then entered Mérard de Saint-Just’s library.
Simon-Pierre Mérard de Saint-Just, born in Paris in 1749, became the maître d’hôtel of the Count of Provence, a position he resigned in 1782; he married Anne-Jeanne-Félicité d’Ormoy, author of novels and small pieces of poetry; possessor of a large fortune, he cultivated letters and wrote, like his wife, many pamphlets that he had printed in a small number of copies; he died on August 17, 1812.
Without the love of books, Mérard de Saint-Just would be completely forgotten.
The majority of his collection came from those of the Marquise de Pompadour, the Du Barry, MM. de Boze, Gaignat, d’Avoult, Randon de Boisset, Mel de Saint-Céran, Lord Keri, Mac-Carthy, Gouttard, Saint-Foix, Charron de Ménars, the Duke of Aumont, etc.
Mérard de Saint-Just, as a true amateur, sought bindings not the richest, but the most elegant and the best cared for: thus all his books dressed in red, green, blue, violet, black, red or lemon morocco came from the hands of Duseuil, Pasdeloup, La Ferté, Derôme the younger, Chameau, Chaumont, from Paris; Roger Payne and Baumgarthen, from London.
