BASSET, P.A. - Jeu Royal de la vie d'Henri IV.

Large sheet with an animated game of goose of 63 numbered squares, spiral, counter clockwise, centripetal focused on the French king Henri IV.
André Basset offers a life of Henri IV in pictures, from his birth to his apotheosis. The route is constructed chronologically, punctuated by political events, marriages, battles and peace.
It shows a sovereign, close to his people and merciful, sharing the meal of poor peasants (n ° 7), letting out of besieged Paris women, children and the elderly (n ° 26), welcoming a peasant from Béarn charged cheese from his country (n ° 51). The "historic" comments have their own box, "rally to my panache" (n ° 20), to the wish to see "the least laborer put the chicken in the pot every Sunday" (n ° 57).

The sovereign restorer of civil peace prevails over the memory of religious dissension: no trace of Saint Barthélemy behind the marriage to Marguerite de Valois (n ° 6). The medals of the members of the royal family, placed on the huts of the geese, constitute a family portrait which makes the Bourbons the "sons of Henry IV" and prepares the succession of Charles X, younger brother of Louis XVIII.
The couple portrait of the Duke and Duchess of Berry dates the engraving between 1816 and 1820, the date of the assassination of the Duke (n ° 59). ¤