[DE TUGNY, Crozat.] (with) [ANONYMOUS]
Catalogue des livres de Monsieur le President Crozat de Tugny. (with) Catalogue des livres.
Paris, Claude-Charles Thiboust, 1751£1,950.00
8vo, pp. xvi, 472, 32. Roman letter, some Italic. Head and tailpieces, decorative initials, heavily marked in contemporary ink and in Hobson’s pencil. Light age yellowing, occasional soiling to last ll. First leaf of second torn without loss, probably from press. A good copy, in contemporary blind tooled calf, spine gilt, red morocco lettering piece, gilt, marbled endpapers, aer, ‘1771’ on front board, early ink note ffep, original satin page marker; lower panel of spine missing, joints cracked, corners rubbed. Armorial bookplate of celebrated bibliographer Anthony Hobson inside front cover.
Joseph-Antoine Crozat, marquis de Tugny (1696-1751) was a French court official and art collector. Heir to a large fortune, Crozat assembled a magnificent collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures; the gallery which housed the La Collection Crozat became famous, and he commissioned a catalogue of engravings to be made to illustrate and advertise his artworks. The collection was bought almost in its entirety by Catherine the Great, and formed the nucleus of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Crozat was also a bibliophile, and his library was posthumously catalogued in order to be sold at auction in Paris in August 1751. The catalogue comprises 5002 lots, of which the final 30 are collections of prints, meticulously sub-divided by subject headings and accompanied by a thorough 30-page author index, in the best tradition of the famous contemporary catalogues produced by Gabriel Martin. Crozat’s library was particularly rich in historiographical works, as well as vernacular romances and in texts relating to the fine arts. The anonymous ‘Catalogue des livres’ with which the Crozat Catalogue is bound consists of 334 lots, and includes, among other things, dozens of vellum liturgical texts, both MS and printed on vellum, numerous court records, a Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii, 1499, and a list of variorum editions. This anonymous catalogue was for sale at the shop of Gabriel Martin in 1753. According to a loosely inserted note by Hobson, it is not in the Grolier Club library. A C19 MS note in French on the ffep, initialled ‘p d g’, states that this catalogue is mentioned only in Peignot, that Etienne Psaume did not mention it in his entry for 1751, and that this copy is marked with ‘la plupart des prix’.
Peignot 93; For Claude-Charles Thiboust, Bigmore and Wyman III, 8-9