Les genealogies, et anciennes descentes des forestiers et comtes de Flandre, avec brieves descriptions de leurs vies et gestes [...], par Corneille Martin, Zelandoys, et ornees de portraicts [...] trovues es plus anciens tableaux, par Pierre Balthasar, et par luimesme, mises en lumiere

Folio (273x178 mm). [6], 119, [3] pp. Collation: A-Q⁴. Engraved pictorial title page with architectural borders, two military figures and other allegorical figures; engraved dedication to Matthias of Habsburg with its coats-of-arms; engraved full-page illustration facing page 1 with two coats-of-arms and a map of Flanders; small woodcut coats-of-arms and initials in the text; 40 full-page engraved full-length portraits in the text, numbered 1-7 (Forestiers) and 1-33 (Contes de Flandre); 1 large engraving facing the colophon showing Death, tombs and angels with a poem by Charles de Navières. Later marbled boards, lettering piece on spine, red edges. On the front pastedown bookplate of the Earls Lamberti. Uniformly browned, small round holes towards the end, but a good, genuine copy.

Second edition (the first had appeared in 1578) bearing the same dedication by Petrus Baltazar to Archduke Matthias of Habsburg, the son of the Emperor Maximillian II, dated Antwerp, 1 February 1580. The first seven portraits refer to the first governors of Flanders, while the following thirty-three portray the Counts of Flanders, sometimes accompanied by their wives and daughters, up to King Philip II of Spain, 33^rd Count of Flanders.

The author, a Lutheran scholar from Antwerp, took his doctorate in art and theology in Germany. From 1591 he taught logic for over thirty years in his hometown.

De Windt, p. 256; Brunet, III, 1495; Graesse, IV, 427.

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