PARIS, FRANCE.- The glory of Louis XIV will pay to repair the roof of Fouquet. The Château of Vaux-le-Vicomte will, in effect, put on sale seventeen sumptuous illustrated books to pay for the restoration of part of the château.

The "Cabinet du Roi" - The set of 21 volumes from the famous Cabinet du Roi is indisputably the major event of the sale. This monumental series of engravings (nearly one thousand) is the outcome of an extensive undertaking to celebrate the power, splendour and glory of Louis XIV. It is, relatively speaking, the equivalent of the graphic documentation of the Château of Versailles in the area of architecture. In the opinion of Marc Fumaroli, who has written the preface of the catalogue, the Cabinet du Roi is a tribute to "half a century of Epiphanies of the French monarchy during its Golden Age".

In 1662, under the impetus and control of Colbert, the leading artists of the period participated in the project, including Le Brun, Israël Silvestre, Van der Meulen, Jean Le Pautre, Sébastien Le Clerc, Claude Mellan and Gérard Edelinck. The engravings illustrate a wide variety of subjects: the collections of the king (paintings, tapestries, statues and medals); royal buildings and gardens (the Louvre, Versailles, Invalides, etc); festivities; and military campaigns. The copy up for sale is one of few known; it is bound in blue morocco of the period and decorated with the royal arms (lot 2, estimate: 350,000 - 500,000 €*).

An ensemble of over one thousand prints by Israël Silvestre, with the exceptional inclusion of 12 of the original drawings by the artist, one of them originating from the Vivant-Denon collection, completes this magnificently illustrated voyage through the France of Louis XIV (lot 16, estimate: 50,000 - 80,000 €).