The Royal Danish CollectionHM The King's Reference LibraryOur booksLe Brun’s Grande Galerie de Versailles, 1752

Le Brun’s Grande Galerie de Versailles, 1752

Det komplette eksemplar af dette pragtværk om en af solkongen Louis 14.s mest storslåede kunstneriske iscenesættelser, Charles Le Bruns spejlgalleri i Versailles, er særlig interessant for både sin indbinding og sin proveniens. Bindet er et fransk pragtbind fra udgivelsesåret eller året efter, lavet af den franske hofbogbinder Antoine-Michel Padeloup d.y., og det har tilhørt én af samtidens mest magtfulde mænd i Danmark, J.H.E. Bernstorff, der efter en periode som dansk gesandt i Frankrig i 1751 tiltrådte stillingen som Frederik 5.s udenrigsminister. Bernstorff var bogsamler med sans for kvalitet, og bogen bærer hans smukke ejermærke på bindet, et såkaldt super-exlibris.

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The Gudbrand Bible, 1584

The collection of Bibles in the Reference Library is large and contains, amongst other things, two of the oldest Danish folio Bibles, Christian III and Christian IV’s Bibles from 1550 and 1639 respectively. A particular rarity among the Bibles is the first complete Icelandic Bible, which the bishop of Hólar in the north of Iceland, Guðbrandur Þorláksson (Gudbrand Thorlakssøn), had translated and published by Jón Jónsson in 1584 with the support of Frederik II. The translation opens with Martin Luther’s forewords to his own Bible translation, which both Christian III’s Bible and The Gudbrand Bible are based on. The Bible is embellished with 29 woodcuts and 29 illuminated initials, and must be considered a milestone in Icelandic ecclesiastical and linguistic history. Today there are around 30 known copies of The Gudbrand Bible in the world.

The Chess Book of Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 1616/1617

Duke Augustus was one of the most well-read and educated European rulers of his time. The famous Bibliotheca Augusta in Wolffenbüttel is named after him. In his youth he wrote the first German language book on chess, Das Schach- oder König-Spiel. it was published under the pseudonym Gustavus Selenus, the first part of which is a rearrangement of the letters in Augustus, while the second derives from Selene = Luna and forms an allusion to Lüneburg. The book is a great rarity today, not least in the apparently complete condition in which it is found here.