[OUDRY (J.-B.)]. Rébus ou logogriphe dédié à son altesse roy - Lot 19

[OUDRY (J.-B.)]. Rébus ou logogriphe dédié à son altesse royale Madame la duchesse de Berry. Ce vend à Paris chet l'auteur sur le pont Nostre Dame..., [1716], in-8° oblong, olive-green morocco, gilt roulette around the boards, arms in the center, ornate ribbed spine, gilt edges (period binding). Collation: title-frontispiece and 40 plates of rebus. Very rare suite of rebuses engraved by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), dedicated to the Duchesse de Berry (1695-1719). 46 plates drawn and etched by Oudry. A title-frontispiece, a dedication plate, four offering solutions to the rebus, and forty rebus. In his dedication to the Duchess, the painter speaks of illuminated figures. The frontispiece, the most accomplished figure in the collection, shows Harlequin and Pierrot. The 40 rebus plates, numbered 1 to 40, combine and add visual signs to help the reader discover a hidden phrase. The subjects are love, seduction and morality. Rebus 2 and 38 are addressed to the Regent, while the fourth refers to the Persian ambassador's visit to Paris. A copy, colored at the time, bearing the coat of arms of the dedicatee, Marie-Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, eldest daughter of Philippe, Regent of France, and Françoise-Marie de Bourbon, known as Mademoiselle de Blois. On July 6, 1710, in Chartres, she married the Duc de Berry, 3rd son of the Grand Dauphin. She died 9 years later, on July 21, 1719. We know of another copy of the same provenance, in a strictly identical binding. Quoted by Cohen, it comes from one of Destailleur's sales and is now kept at Waddesdon Manor. It was bound without the dedication plate, as ours was without it and the plates with the solutions to the riddles. The copies cited in Jean-Gérald Castex's article "Le livre de Rébus ou Logogriphes gravé par Jean-Baptiste Oudry..." belong to the BNF's Département des Estampes. There are two of them, reassembled and glued to leaves. Rare early handwritten notes on the verso of some plates. Dimensions : 150 x 195 mm. Provenance: Fernand J. Nyssen, with his bookplate. Cohen, II, 767; Castex (J.-G.), "Le livre de Re?bus ou Logogriphes grave? par Jean-Baptiste Oudry : un pe?che? de jeunesse?", in Revue de la BNF, 2004, n° 18, pp. 57-69; Barber (G.), The James A. de Rothschild bequest at Waddesdon Manor. Printed books and bookbindings, vol. I-II, p. 86 with reproductions and pp. 973-975, no. 525 with reproductions.