The Life of Jeanne D’Albert Queen of Navarre.

FREER, Martha Walker.

$200.00

Item Number: 139030

London: Hurst and Blackett, Publishers, 1855.

First edition of Freer’s appreciation of Jeanne Baptiste d’Albert de Luynes. Octavo, bound in three quarters emerald green crushed levant morocco, gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, tissue-guarded engraved frontispiece portrait. In very good condition.

The most envied woman at the Savoyard court due to her influence over the Duke of Savoy, French noblewoman Jeanne Baptiste d'Albert was well known at court. Jeanne Baptiste was a good friend of Monsieur le Duc, future Prime minister of France, and his mother Madame la Duchesse Douairière who was her age. A great letter writer, she was interested in art, science and even kept in contact with the budding Voltaire and other philosophers. In Paris, she installed the numerous gifts she received when in Turin, at the Hôtel d'Hauterive – now destroyed since by the creation of the Boulevard Raspail – which she enlarged to house her already large collection of objets d'art. During the Regency, she increased her fortune greatly thanks to the Système de Law, the brainchild of John Law, a Scottish economist who was a protégé of the Regent of France. With her larger fortune, she ordered the construction of two town residences to be constructed by the architect Victor Dailly. Out of the two, one remains and can be seen at 1 Rue du Regard.