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With a portrait in commemoration of his beloved horse

EISENBERG, Friedrich Wilhelm Baron d'.
La perfezione e i difetti del cavallo.

With engraved frontispiece with a different title, woodcut vignette on title printed in red and black, 119 figures on 22 full-page engraved plates, showing horses in several positions, folding engraved plate of a full horse.

Florence, Giuseppe Allegrini for the Stamperia Imperiale, 1753. Folio. Contemporary vellum. With engraved frontispiece with a different title, woodcut vignette on title printed in red and black, 119 figures on 22 full-page engraved plates, showing horses in several positions, folding engraved plate of a full horse. (4), CXLIII, (1 blank) pp.

Very rare first edition of this beautiful work on the use of the rein with horses, with the original French text next to the Italian translation, except for the dedication to the Emperor François I, which is in French only. The title of the frontispiec reads: Anti-Maquignonage pour éviter la surprise dans l'emplette des chevaux. According to Menessier de la Lance the present work is extremely rare. Friedrich Wilhelm, Baron Rais d'Eisenberg (ca. 1700-ca. 1770) belonged to the aristocracy of the Holy Empire and was one of the most famous horse-lovers of his time. He was raised among horses, and worked first at the court of Saxen-Weimar, then as an equerry in Naples, for the vice king. Later he also worked in Vienna - in the famous Spanish Riding School -, England and Tuscany. The Baron wrote several important and also lavishly illustrated books on horses: his Description du manège moderne dans sa perfection, London 1727, and Dictionnaire des termes du manège moderne, 1747, being the best well-known. In 1753, when the present work was published, he worked as director and first equerry at the Academy of Pisa. The plates in this work are engraved after the author's own designs. They depict all aspects of the horse, heads, tails, fronts, feet, legs, etc., all drawn in an elegant style. In the preface d'Eisenberg says the following about the folding engraving of his favourite horse Favori: "... il ne me reste, que d'y joindre que la Taille douce represente un Cheval Barbe, que j'ai dressé pendant que l'Academie étoit a Florence. Il m'a donné tant de plaisir par rapport à sa finesse et à son air qu'il avoit de manier sous moi, que je le nommois Favori. J'ai fait aussi pour sa memoire ce propre dessein gravé, qui lui ressemble beaucoup: je l'ai choisis avec raison pour la Devise, parce que la Bride a produit en lui toute la vertu et la perfection qu'on peut pretendre d'un Cheval parfait et achevé de sa Nation." A second edition was published in Amsterdam in 1764 and a German translation of the book appeared in 1780.

Fine copy.

Mennessier de la Lance I, 438; not in Podeschi, or Nissen, ZBI; only 1 copy mentioned in the NUC.

Related Subjects: Horses & Horsemanship

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