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On the previous page we reviewed early bindings by Douceur and I decided to search again for clues. In March of 2018 we were looking at a Douceur binding shown above in Comparative Diagram 1, it is found in the online digital collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France (BnF, RLR, RES P-YF-243) where they claim that it is a binding by Padeloup (click here to see this.) This is a binding that has in the center of the boards the arms of Marie-Thérèse d'Espagne, dauphine de France, Paris. A rough translation of the information given by the BnF for this binding tells us that this binding was executed in 1745 and offered as a wedding gift, offered to Marie-Thérèse Antoinette, dauphine of France, who had married Louis, dauphin of France in 1745 (1725-1769).
It is one of the rare printed copies of this comedy-ballet written by Voltaire at the request of Louis XV, which was performed at court on the evening of the wedding of the dolphin Louis, February 23, 1745. By the time we arrived on the 14th page of that March 2018 article we could prove with absolute certainty that the imprints found on that binding derived from the tools of Louis Douceur (click here to see that page). Now I have stumbled upon another copy of this same publication that has a nearly identical dentelle and bears the arms of Louis XV it is found in a 1904 Catalogue and has been reproduced on a Bibliophile blog by Jean-Paul Fontaine, dit Le Bibliophile Rhemus (click here to see this). It may be that these copies of Voltaire's comedy-ballet with special bindings were made for members of the royal family to have while they were watching the ballet on the evening of the wedding... in that case these bindongs would have to have been made before February 23 1745. The BnF assert that their attribution of the RES P-YF-243 binding to Padeloup is based on the tools, "L'attribution repose sur la présence dans le matériel de dorure de fers caractéristiques de la production de cet atelier.""The attribution is based on the presence in the gilding material of tools characteristic of the production of this workshop." is like saying that some of the tools only appear to have the characteristics of Padeloup's tools... ? In any case I do not see a single obvious Padeloup tool, but instead we see Douceur tools. |
| Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain (María Teresa Antonia Rafaela; 11 June 1726 22 July 1746) was an Infanta of Spain by birth and Dauphine of France by marriage to Louis, Dauphin of France, son of Louis XV of France. She died aged 20, three days after giving birth to a daughter who died in 1748. |
| We find in the BnF provenance information about the binding RES P-YF-243, that once belonged to Marie-Thérèse Antoinette Raphaëlle de Bourbon and yet was purchased by the BnF in 1945 from a certain Pierre Rajat. It strikes me as strange that such a rare and important binding somehow was taken out of the Royal collection and 150 years later sold back to France by someone who is known by name only, otherwise unidentified. (Click here to see this mystery) |
| La princesse de Navarre (The Princess of Navarre) is a comédie-ballet with music by Jean-Philippe Rameau and words by Voltaire, first performed on 23 February 1745 at La Grande Ecurie, Versailles. It was commissioned to celebrate the marriage of the Infanta Maria Teresa Rafaela of Spain to Louis, Dauphin of France. La princesse de Navarre opened the wedding festivities, while another new Rameau opera, Platée, closed them. The piece takes the form of a comédie-ballet, effectively a play with a large amount of incidental music, recalling the collaborations of Molière and Lully in the 17th century. Voltaire was a great admirer of Rameau, even considering him too good a composer for such a task. Nevertheless, Rameau wrote around an hour of music for the play, including an overture and three divertissements (musical interludes which ended each act). Little of it has much bearing on the main action of the drama which concerns the complicated love life of the eponymous mediaeval princess. Voltaire found Rameau to be a demanding and critical collaborator, leading the dramatist to declare: "Poor Rameau is mad...Rameau is as great an eccentric as he is a musician". The production was a spectacular one, involving no less than 180 "extras". Voltaire complained about the acoustics of the hall in which it was staged claiming "the ceiling was so high that the actors appeared pygmies and they couldn't be heard". Nevertheless, the music was a critical success. Much of the material was reworked to produce another opera, Les fêtes de Ramire, later the same year. (click here to see this wiki page) |
| Enter Madame Pompadour... due to her involvement in Paris salons as well as her grace and beauty, Louis XV had heard the name of Jeanne Antoinette mentioned at court as early as 1742. In 1744, Jeanne Antoinette sought to catch the eye of the King while he led the hunt in the forest of Sénart. Because she occupied an estate near this location she was permitted to follow the royal party at a distance. However, wanting to attract the King's notice, Jeanne Antoinette drove directly in front of the King's path, once in a pink phaeton, wearing a blue dress, and once in a blue phaeton, wearing a pink dress. The King sent a gift of venison to her. Though the King's current mistress, Madame de Châteauroux (Marie Anne de Mailly), had warned off Jeanne Antoinette, the position became vacant on 8 December 1744 when Châteauroux died. On 24 February 1745, Jeanne Antoinette received a formal invitation to attend the masked ball held on February 25 at the Palace of Versailles to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin Louis of France to Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain (172646). It was at this ball that the King, disguised along with seven courtiers as a yew tree, publicly declared his affection for Jeanne Antoinette. Before all of court and the royal family, Louis unmasked himself before Jeanne Antoinette, who was dressed as Diana the Huntress, in reference to their encounter in the forest of Sénart. (click here to see this wiki page) |
| I am including these details to put into perspective the events and timing of these bindings by Douceur, certainly they would have been some of the most important work that he produced up to this time. There is a question, I suppose, concerning Padeloup who was technically the King's binder at this time and who may have handed down the work to Douceur, and it is probably for this reason that the BnF have attributed these bindings to Padeloup (and nothing to do with the decoration of the binding). It may be that Padeloup farmed out the work when he was overloaded with requests for luxury bindings and that Douceur along with Dubuisson and others were actually producing Padeloup's dentelle bindings, that is to say bindings in which you find Padeloup's ticket but that have been decorated with dentelles made by someone else. It is this that has led to so much confusion and attribution errors. This situation should not exist today, and yet the Bibliotheque nationale de France continues to disperse erroneous information that is then propagated by auction experts in an endless cycle of misinformation. |
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| Even experts are sometimes wrong, before you spend thousands on a book, please do your own research! Just because I say a certain binding can be attributed to le Maitre isn't any kind of guarantee, don't take my word for it, go a step further and get your own proof. In these pages I have provided you with a way of doing just that. |
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