Le Parfait portrait de Marie Therese Infante d’Espagne, et Reyne de France.
4to [23 x 16.5 cm], 7, (1) pp. Nineteenth-century red quarter calf with marbled boards, minor wear. Very fine. Extremely rare first edition of this poem glorifying Maria Theresa, Infanta of Spain (1638-1683), whose hand in marriage would soon become part of the war bounty of Louis XIV during negotiations for the Treaty of the Pyrenees that ended the war between France and Spain in 1659. Colletet, who like Louis had never set eyes on Maria Teresa, fantasizes that the gods have granted her physical and intellectual gifts guaranteed to make Louis fall in love with her at first sight. She was, in fact, generally acknowledged to have the rather plain Habsburg features, and to have been shy and rather dull: hence Louis’s series of brilliant mistresses. A second edition of the Parfait portrait appeared at Toulouse in the same year, from a different publisher. At the end of the poem Colletet expresses the pious hope that the marriage will indeed take place. Permission to print this work was granted on August 9, 1659, a full three months before the treaty was signed. Publication seems to have been prudently withheld until final negotiations were complete: Maria Theresa left Spain to meet her betrothed in June 1660. The work is signed “F.C.”, and can be attributed to François Colletet, who wrote a number of works on the royal marriage (see Watanabe-O’Kelly & Simon, 1866-69 1874, 1883). Colletet (1628-1680?), son of the poet Guillaume de Colletet, wrote the popular burlesque poem Tracas de Paris, 1666, a sequel to Berthod’s Ville de Paris, 1643. Very rare: I US copy of this title at UCRiverside, published the same year in Toulouse. A similar title: Description dv parfait portrait de Marie Therese infante d'Espagne, et reyne de France. Contenant les rares et royalles qualitez de son esprit, & les parfaittes beautez de son auguste visage, same publisher, same year of publication, same collation is at Harvard. * On Colletet, see P.L. Jacob, Paris ridicule et burlesque au XVIIe siècle (1859). On the ephemeral material published for the marriage, see Abby E. Zanger, Scenes from the Marraiage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Stanford, 1997).
Price: $1,250.00