Mariette LYDIS, illustrator, Armand GODOY. ~ Les Litanies de la Vierge. 48 lithographies enluminées... Paris: [printed by Audin in Lyon and Dorfinant in Paris for] A. Blaizot et fils, 1934.
Folio (280 × 225 mm), pp. [212], plus 48 pochoir coloured plates. Slight marginal staining to versos of some plates, never visible on the rectos. Modern half morocco preserving original wrappers.
First edition with the Lydis illustrations. One of a total edition of 131 copies, this one of the 115 on papier de Rives). The illustrations, many in the style of illuminated miniatures or icons are transformed through brilliant pochoir colouring executed in the workshop of master colourist Jean Saude, reproducing the artist’s signature on each.
These verse litanies, after the traditional catholic Marian litany, are entirely the creation of Armand Godoy and were first published (unillustrated) in 1930. Symbolist poet Godoy was born in Havana in 1880 and spent the first part of his life in Cuba and Peru, working in banking and the tobacco trade, before emigrating to France in 1919 with the express intention of becoming a poet ‘dans la langue de Baudelaire’. Much influenced by the Parnassians and the symbolists he was also a major collector of books, manuscripts and prints, amassing an unrivalled collection of Baudelaireiana. Among his numerous small-scale published works in French is his translation of Poe’s Raven — Le Corbeau d’Edgar Poe (Émile-Paul frères, 1929, with a frontispiece by Lydis. Worldcat lists copies at Princeton and Bridwell only outside continental Europe.