[The Seven Deadly Sins & The Seven Virtues].

7 leaves of numbered engravings (1-7) in each suite. 278 x 200 mm. In a later quarter-binding in leather with paste paper sides, title in ink on the spine.

[BOUND WITH:]

GRISPOLDI, Gaspare. VII Petitiones orationis dominicae correspondentes ad VII sacramenta XPI Ecclae nec non ad VII Virtutes... [Italy, circa 1600]. Engraved title and 5 engraved plates (nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 7) out of 7.

Three exceedingly rare separately published suites of engravings on the seven deadly sins, seven virtues and seven petitions bound together. The first series was engraved by Edme Charpy (1575-?), active in Paris in the early 17th century, and published by the engraver, printer and print seller Jean IV Leclerc (1560-1621/2). Since 1619, Leclerc served as the engraver of maps to Louis XIII, publishing Le Théâtre géographique du Royaume de France in 1620, which went through several editions after his death. The second series, also published by Leclerc, does not identify the engraver.

The first suite, illustrating the seven deadly sins, is composed of seven engraved plates, each depicting an angel holding an instrument of passion with a surrounding aureole, standing on an expressive demonic figure with an open mouth, in which lies the sin's personification. Thus, a well-dressed noble woman devoured by the demon represents pride (plate 1), while a man eating his heart personifies envy (plate 4). The angel is flanked by two small medallions with religious images and biblical quotations. Below the central image are biblical quotations in Latin. The image and the text are surrounded by a double frame with delicate pictorial motives in between the two frames. Our copy is without a title page, unrecorded by Le Blanc, which is present in the Harvard copy.

The second series consists of seven engravings portraying virtues, personified by women, with scenes from the Bible in the background. The images of women are placed in medallions, flanked by elegant floral motives. Like in the first suite, quotations in Latin from the Bible are placed below the image, while the image and the text are surrounded by a double frame with pictorial motives in between the two frames.

The third incomplete suite of engravings in this volume with the title "The Seven Petitions of Oratio Dominica with Seven Sacraments and Seven Virtues" by an Italian engraver, Gaspare Grispoldi, was clearly inspired by Mattheus Greuter's successful suite of engravings, published in 1598 in Lyon with the same title. Each print in the series corresponds to a particular virtue and sacrament: faith and baptism, hope and confirmation, charity and holy orders, temperance and eucharist, mercy and penance, prudence and matrimony, fortitude and extreme unction. Our copy lacks plates 2 and 6: hope and confirmation & prudence and matrimony.

These suites are extremely rare. Harvard owns a set on virtues and a set on sins (including the title page). There are five prints (out of seven) from the seven deadly sins series at Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig, Germany.

*Le Blanc, Manuel de l'amateur d'estampes (1854), vol. 1, 631: 2-8 (for the vices series); Gieben, Christian Sacrament and Devotation (1980), pp. 1-2 (for Grispoldi's VII Petitiones orationis dominicae).

Price: $4,450.00

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