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ILL-FATED DUKE OF BURGUNDY DECLARED DAUPHIN
[ALMANAC - WALL PRINT]. Monseigneur le Duc de Bourgogne declaré Dauphin a Marly le 16 Avril 1711.
Paris, Gabriel Landry, [1711]. Large engraved wall print (79 x 53.5 cm) with the title in the head margin, with four smaller scenes in cartouches and roundels, and a letterpress almanac for the year 1712, in red and black, pasted over two blank spaces left for the purpose on plinths in the lower left and right corners.
| Orders and Information | € 3950 |
A large and spectacular wall print cum almanac showing the seated Louis, Duke of Burgundy (1682-1712) surrounded by allegorical female figures. He holds a large medallion portrait of his grandfather, Louis XIV, and a book bearing the name of Louis XII, while Religion holds a Bible before him, the Province of Dauphiné offers him her crown, and other figures bear objects as attributes of science, the arts, trade and industry, etc., including a fortification plan and an armillary sphere. More books bearing the names of illustrious kings from Julius Caesar to Louis XIII stand on the shelf behind the Duke. Other events of the year are depicted in a large scrollwork cartouche at the foot of the print, another cartouche above it, and roundels on either side: the election of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, the Ottoman defeat of the Muscovites near Falczin, and two victories of the Duke of Vendome in Catalonia.
France at this time was being drained by the War of the Spanish Succession, and when Louis, heir to the French throne (known as Le Grand Dauphin) died in April 1711, his son Louis (known as Le Petit Dauphine) was named heir in his place. This too proved ill-fated, Louis dying less than a year later (only two or three months after the wall almanac was issued), so when Louis XIV died in 1715 Le Petit Dauphine's five-year-old son succeeded to the crown.
The almanac, titled Almanach pour l'An de Grace M. DCCXII. , shows the phases of the moon at the top of each of its twelve columns.
A very good copy, with two folds across the middle, a stub on the reverse, and traces of older folds, but only very slightly worn at the folds. A magnificent Royal wall print and almanac celebrating what proved to be the Duke of Burgundy's short-lived term as heir to the French crown.
