Le Moyne de Morgues, Jacques; illust., ed. & trans. Theodor de Bry

Brevis narratio eorum quæ in Florida Americæ Provi[n]cia Gallis acciderunt, secunda in illam Navigatione, duce Renato de Laudo[n]niere classis Præfecto: Anno M D LXIIII. Quae est secunda pars Americae. Additæ figuræ & Incolarum eicones ibidem ad vivu[m] expressæ brevis item Declaratio Religionis, rituum, vivendique ratione ipsorum. Auctorum Iacobo le Moÿne, cui cognomen de Morgues, Laudo[n]nierum in ea Navigatione sequnto. Nunc primùm Gallico sermone à Theodoro de Brÿ Leodiense in lucem edita: latio verò donata a C.C.A.

Frankfurt: Johann Wechel for Theodor de Bry, 1591. First edition.

Folio in 4s and 6s (12 13/16” x 8 7/8”, 326mm x 226mm): binder’s blank, )(⁴ a-d⁴, A-G⁶ H⁶(–H6; H1+χ1) I⁶(–I6) K⁴, 2 binder’s blanks [$3 signed; –)(1, A1, H2; K2 mis-signed “)( )(²”]. 77 leaves, pp. [8] (engraved title, blank, 2pp. dedication to the Duke of Saxony, 2pp. to the reader, privilege, blank), 1-30, [2] (list of illustrations, blank), [114] (engraved part-title,[1] blank; 42 half-page engravings with titles and captions, numbered I-XLII, blank verso; _χcolophon, _χblank, 6pp. letter to Charles IX of France, 7pp. narration of Gourgues’s 1567 voyage, 2pp. index, preface to the parergon, errata, blank, 7pp. parergon, colophon). With 47 engravings integral with the text: 2 title-pages, a half-page armorial achievement of the Duke of Saxony, a half-page depiction of the Ark, 42 half-page depictions of Native Americans and a folding map (“Floridae Americae provinciae Recens & exactissima descriptio…”) laid down on wove paper.

Bound in modern laced vellum. Author (explorer), title and imprint in ink manuscript along the spine: “Laudonniere. Gallorum in Floridam. Francoforti, 1591.” Presented in a marbled-paper slip-case.

Washed and pressed. Repair to the upper-left corner of the folding map and to the verso of E6 (illustration XXIX), cutting through the head-line (with a little ink facsimile). Traces of paper-clip rust to the title-page, along with the date in Arabic numerals and “13” in ballpoint ink. Ownership inscription of Wm. R. Johnson, Jr. to the front paste-down.


Theodor de Bry (Theodorus or Dirk, 1528–1598) was born in Liège to a distinguished Protestant (Calvinist) family of goldsmith-engravers; through the marriage of his daughter Maria Magdalena to Matthew Merian (father to Maria Sibylla Merian by his second wife), the family would continue to be engraver-publishers into the XVIIIc. The persecution of Protestants in 1570 resulting in de Bry’s exile from deeply Catholic Liège and a peregrination through the Netherlands and England. In London he met Richard Hakluyt, the apostle of American exploration and colonization, as well as Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (ca. 1533–1588), and began to formulate a major project publishing accounts of voyages. Once settled in Frankfurt, de Bry — from the age of 60 —began two parallel series, now known as the Grands Voyages (Great Voyages, i.e., those to the Americas, in 14 parts) and the Petits Voyages (Little Voyages, i.e., those to Asia, in 12 parts), which were completed after his death by his wife Catherine and his sons Johann Theodor and Johann Israel. Each part of the series was a stand-alone work, and while runs or complete series are sometimes found, likely the parts were mostly bought piece-meal.

The present volume is the second part of the American series, and contains de Bry’s translation into Latin (there was also a German translation, with no established priority) of Le Moyne’s (French) “brief narration of those things that befell the French in Florida, a province of America” during the disastrous expedition led by René Goulaine de Laudonnière in 1564. Le Moyne was in this capacity the first European artist to travel to the Americas and to record what he saw (including botanical watercolors handled by Arader). Accounts of the earlier Ribaut expedition (1562) and the later expedition of de Gourgues (1567) are also included, but their authors are not named.

The illustrations — for which de Bry’s voyages are perhaps so ardently sought — are after Le Moyne’s watercolors, which de Bry traveled to London to buy from his widow (although recent research suggests this may not be the case, and that the images are instead after John White, whose work appeared in the first part of the series, Hariot’s Virginia). They depict native Americans — particularly the Timucua, a group that perished in the early XVIIIc — in a variety of situations and activities, from the ordinary (cooking fish) to the preposterous (cooking humans). Although assessments of their veracity have fluctuated over the centuries, their early date and thoroughness have made them the most enduring records of contact-era native Americans. The map is the first French map of the Americas to show Florida, and extends west into the Gulf of Mexico and up the Carolina coast. John Matthews Baxter in his 1941 “Annotated Checklist of Florida Maps” (Tequesta I, pp. 107-115) calls it “the most remarkable and important map, which has been preserved from sixteenth century maps, of that part of the East Coast which lies between Cape Hatteras and Cape Florida…”

William R. Johnson Jr. is recorded as having been a member of the Florida Historical Society in 1948; it seems plausible that he was the owner of the volume. Purchased at Sotheby’s New York 28 June 2024, lot 1015.

Alden & Landis 591/39; Burden, Mapping of North America 79; Cumming & De Vorsey, The Southeast in Early Maps 14; JCB³ I pp. 387-388; Streeter II.1172.

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[1] Indorum Floridam provinciam inhabitantium eicones, primùm ibidem ad vivum expressæ à Iacobo Le Moyne cui cognomen de Morgues: addita ad singulas brevi earum delcaratione. Nunc verò recens à Theodoro de Brÿ Leodiense in æs incisæ, & evulgatæ.

Item #JLR0650

Price: $48,000