LAFOSSE, Philippe-Étienne.
Cours dhippiatrique, ou Traité complet de la médecine des chevaux, orne de soixante & cinq planches gravées avec soin.
Paris, Pierre Poiré, 1772. Large folio (ca. 51 x 35 cm). With 65 (mostly numbered) engravings, including 2 frontispieces, 56 hand-coloured plates (including 19 folding), and 7 engraved headpieces. Further with an engraved title vignette and an engraved armorial head piece on the dedication leaf. Contemporary gold-tooled mottled calf. [6], XI, [1], XVII, [1], 402, VI, [2 blank] pp.
€ 25,000
First edition of this remarkable book on horse anatomy: the famous "Veterinary Course, or Complete Treatise on Equine Medicine", the principal work of the French veterinarian Philippe-Étienne Lafosse (1738-1820). Lafosse had considerable anatomical skill, coupled with a profound knowledge of horses and equitation, and his work ranks with Stubbs in the artistic realisation of equine anatomy. "Ce livre est un véritable monument élevé à lhippologie. Papier, impression, dessin, gravure sont également soignés. Il coûta, dit-on, plus de 70,000 livres à lauteur" (Mennessier de la Lance). The plates, rendered with great skill by B. Michel Adam, F. A. Aveline, C. Baquoy, Benard, Ch. Beulier, L. Bosse, Prevost, and others after Harguinier, Lafosse, and Saullier, earned the production a long-standing reputation as the finest book in this branch of science (cf. Brunet).
With the bookplate of Jean Stern (1875-1962), a Jewish-French fencer whose mother was a the French scion of the Rothschilds, and who competed at the 1908 Summer Olympics for France. The binding shows some slight signs of wear, a few minor closed tears or repairs to folding plates. A fine, wide-margined copy of this magnificent work on equine anatomy. Brunet III, 765; Brunet VI, 7727; Cohen/R. 587; Huth 46; Mellon 61; Mennessier de la Lance II, 20f; Nissen 2360.
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