?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
LEFÈVRE, JEAN. Le Respit de la Mort. Title printed in red and black; woodcut illustrations on A2r and G6v; printer's full-page device at end. [68] leaves. Printed in bâtarde type. 8vo, 146x96 mm, modern black oasis blind-tooled to panel design with skull and crossbones device in center of covers; marginal toning on title, contents otherwise clean. Paris: [Alain Lotrian et Pierre Sergent], 1533
Exceedingly scarce fourth edition of a long poem on death by an attorney at the Parlement of Paris (circa 1320-circa 1387), composed in 1376 and first published in 1506. Lefèvre's work is presented in the form of a lawsuit in which he seeks relief from the debt of his own mortality, with his legal colleagues arguing against him. The first recorded use of the word "macabre" occurs in a verse on leaf G5r (" Je fis de macabre la dance / Qui toute gent meine a la trece / Et a la fosse les adresce"), although the interpretation of these lines as the first explicit reference to the "danse macabre" or Dance of Death is uncertain. This edition not in NUC; OCLC locates only the copy at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel; French Vernacular Books 33454 locates one more at the Musée Condée in Chantilly.
