Gabriel de MINUT. De la Beaute, Discours divers. Taken from two very beautiful ways of speaking, of which the Hebrew & Greek usēt,... meaning that what is naturally beautiful, is also naturally good. Avec la Paule-Graphie, ou description des beautez d'une Dame Tholosaine, nommee la Belle Paule. In-8, midnight blue morocco, triple gilt fillet, beautifully decorated 5-nerved spine, lemon morocco lining with gilt lace framing, double endpapers, gilt edges (Cuzin). Baudrier, IV-157 // Brunet, III-1737 // Cioranescu, 15108 // Rothschild, II-1838. 282-(3f. blank missing here) / a-s8 / 93 x 163 mm. First edition of this treatise on beauty, which includes La Belle Paule's eulogy of all parts of the body. Gabriel de Minut was born in Toulouse around 1520. A man of great erudition and wit, he was an ardent student and obtained a doctorate in law, became maître des requêtes to Catherine de Médicis and was then appointed seneschal of Rouergue. He died in 1587, leaving his De la beauté unpublished, which his sister Charlotte de Minut, abbess of the convent of Sainte-Claire in Toulouse, undertook to have published the same year. This work is a curious treatise full of curious and amusing research (Larousse), a mixture of abstract considerations and examples, often very singular (Picot). At the end, it contains, above all, the Paule-Graphie, a eulogy of Paule de Viguier, a lady of Toulouse so beautiful that she could not show herself in the streets without risking provoking a riot. In it, the author sings at length, body part after body part, of the lady's beauties, both those that can be seen and others that can only be suspected, although he defends himself maliciously: as for the others, which are beyond our control, they are closed letters to us, & letters patent to her husband only... This reserve is only a facade, however, and Minut does not, in his praise, exclude any part of the body of the beautiful Paule. It seems, although it is not certain, that the edition was not to the taste of either the muse or her husband, and that most of the copies were destroyed at their request. A very fine copy. Provenance: François-Gustave Guyot de Villeneuve (II, 26-31 March 1901, no. 1106), Henri Bordes (1911, no. 72) and Édouard Moura (ex-libris, 3-8 December 1923, no. 870).