Le Breviare Nostre Dame, Auquel Tout Le Pseautier est distribué par les sept iours de la sepmaine by BREVIARY. Use of Notre Dame of Paris - 1587

Paris: J. Mettayer and A. L'Angelier, 1587. Contemporary richly gilt calf decorated with twenty individual tools (rubbed, front panel slightly damaged, corners and rear hinge neatly repaired). The two outer double-rule frames are separated by blooms, arabesques, vines and dots. The field has twenty-four ovals and four circles. In the center of each is a double phi, an acorn, a bloom, interlaced C's or interlaced MA. S fermés and tiny stars fill the interstices. The central oval is left open. The single vertical compartment of the flat spine has the same decor as the panels with additional tools that include a smiling sun and a five-pointed star (a minute phi in its middle); gilt-ruled board edges, all edges gilt.  This binding is in the style of those commissioned by Pietro Duodo (1564-1611), Venetian ambassador to Paris 1594-97. Abruptly recalled, he was forced to abandoned his library, which was rediscovered during the French Revolution, but its provenance was not resolved until the 1920s. Printed for the Chapter of Notre Dame in Paris. Four examples appear to have survived: BnF (Adler), Mazarine, Harvard (Henri III's copy in a superb binding but lacking two leaves - Pt. I f. 235 and Pt. II f. 15) and the present example (lacking Pt. II, f. 16). L'Angelier executed a Diurnal for the chapter in 1611 (no copy known); early signature of Henri Grégoire of Tours, who supplied a manuscript index to the psalm incipits on the front flyleaves. ¶Bohatta, Bibliographie der Breviere, 1501-1850 2526a (after copies sold in 1875 and 1920); not in Balsamo & Simonen's Abel L'Angelier.