Gabrielle D'Estrées. (In English).
London: Humphreys, 1907. Full morocco, 8 1/2 inches tall. An elegant and luxurious full crushed morocco with gilt raised bands, neat gilt tooling around a fleur de lys centre tool. The upper board has the title framed within a series of gilt fillets and a larger fleur de lys corner tool. Gilt dentelles and all edges. From the Library of the Late Christopher Foyle of Beeleigh Abbey. A fine printing by Humphreys on hand-made paper. The remarkable Gabrielle D'Estrée was, in her short life, mistress to Henry IV of France, and was instrumental in ending the religious wars that had reduced France into chaos during the second half of the 16th Century. Today she is most remembered for a series of extraordinary paintings of her in a bathtub, most memorably tweaking the nipple of her fellow bather, her sister, Julienne-Hippolyte-Joséphine, Duchess of Villars in the Palace of Fontainebleau.