Les Anciennes et modernes genealogies des Roys de France...auec leurs...Effigies

FIRST EDITION: AN ICONIC CHILDREN'S BOOK OF NATIONALISM AND LEGEND.
In the first of the book's three principal parts, the dedication to ten-year-old François, Dauphin of France (1518-36) demonstrates the superiority of the French over the ancient Romans and confirms the French monarchy as the defender of Christendom. The main text begins with a summary of Western, i.e., "French", history from the fall of Troy to the early 16th century. The opening woodcut of Francus, Aeneas and Antenor escaping Troy in flames reinforces France's claims to ancient glory.
The lives of fifty-seven kings of France, from Pharamond to Louis XII (the Dauphin's grandfather, d. 1515), occupy two-thirds of the volume. Each biography is a tightly crafted mnemonic with a prose narrative, a portrait and a verse epitaph. The narrative relates the political and military events of the monarch's reign, and IN THE EXTRAORDINARY FIRST-PERSON EPITAPH THE DECEASED SPEAKS DIRECTLY TO THE DAUPHIN. Each king describes and explains himself, his circumstances, motivations, triumphs and failings.
Said to be copied from the statues in the Paris Palace Great Hall, "the portraits...have a great interest for the history of the woodcut in France" (Firmin-Didot, tr.). "The artist who cut the portrait of the kings gave to most of them, and especially to the oldest, a marked resemblance to François Ier [the Dauphin's father] and especially [his] well-known nose...proof they all descend from the same family" (Hamon, tr.). The cuts reappeared across the continent, engraved or in woodcut, to 1700. The first English royal portrait gallery, Rastell's The Pastyme of People (1529), has much in common with Bouchet's Genealogies.
Some twenty-five years ago, I began looking for a copy of this marvelous portrait gallery. I have located one complete (Harvard) and one defective example (Getty) in the U.S. In fine condition, complete with the privilege leaf; from the libraries of Ambroise Firmin-Didot (1790-1876; Catalogue (VI.1881) 514), E.-G.-M. de Champ-Repus (1828-92; bookplate), Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919; Catalogue...of Early French Books (1910) 59) and Edouard Rahir (1862-1924; Bibliothèque II (1931) 423).
¶Hamon, Un Grand rhétoriqueur Poitivin Jean Bouchet 178-9; Buisson, Répertoire des ouvrages pédagogiques du XVIe siècle 84-5; Pelc, Illustrium imagines: Das Porträtbuch der Renaissance 23; Brun, Le Livre français illustré de la Renaissance 141; Hauser, Les Sources de l'histoire de France XVIe siècle 30; Bechtel, Catalogue des gothiques français B-282; Répertoire bibliographique des livres imprimées en France au 16e siècle V: 72,20; Cioranesco 4466.