ROTHSCHILD’S MACKLIN BIBLE
[BIBLE.]
The Holy Bible. The Old Testament (& New Testament), embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists …
London, Printed for Thomas Macklin, by Thomas Bensley, 1800.
Six vols in seven, large folio, each with a half-title; a total of 70 etched and engraved plates (dated between 1791 and 1800) and 100 engraved vignettes; some scattered foxing to plates as always, withal a fine copy; in an extremely handsome contemporary binding of dark blue straight-grained morocco by Staggemeier and Welcher (with their ticket in vol. I), covers with a wide border of roll-tools (hexagons, vines, and acanthus leaves), later central gilt arms of Baron James de Rothschild (see below), spines gilt in seven compartments with fillets and a large floriate lozenge, raised double bands, dentelles gilt, glazed pink paper endpapers, morocco hinges, double endbands sewn in red, yellow, and blue silk thread, red silk markers, all edges gilt; a few small scrapes to covers and joints, a few neat restorations to corners, endcaps, and joints, skilful retouching; bookplates of James de Rothschild, booklabels of the Chateau de Ferrières.
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The Holy Bible. The Old Testament (& New Testament), embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists …
A wonderful set, in an extremely attractive contemporary binding by Staggemeier and Welcher, of this monumental feat of British printing, the grandest and most ambitious of all English Bibles.
Printed on a new, thick wove Whatman paper in a specially designed large type, and illustrated with seventy full-page engravings after Fuseli, Reynolds, Kauffman, West, and others, and a suite of emblematic ornamental head- and tail-pieces by Loutherbourg, Macklin’s Bible was the culmination of a project that had begun as early as 1789. It was an enormously expensive venture – Reynolds alone was paid £500 for his illustration of the Holy Family – which nearly bankrupted Macklin, and one which he himself never saw finished; he died before the last of the vignettes had been completed.
A matching edition of the Apocrypha was printed in 1816 and, as often, is not found here.
Provenance: Baron James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868), the German-born banker, industrialist, and art collector who founded the French branch of the family and became adviser to ministers and kings, banker to the French government, financier of France’s industrial growth, and one of the richest men in the world. His Château de Ferrières, 35km from Paris and designed by Joseph Paxton, was perhaps the grandest private home of its day; it was completed in 1862, the inauguration attended by Napoleon III.
Herbert 1442. Please note: this item is extremely heavy, and will attract commensurate shipping charges.
