A rare copy of the illustrations of La Fontaine’s drawings was offered for sale at the famous international auction house, Christie’s, for $ 2.7 million, which were designed by the French painter Jean-Baptiste Oudry, in the eighteenth century, last Wednesday, in New York, and the piece was estimated between 1.5 and 2.5 One million dollars by Christie’s, which is known worldwide for selling works of art, but the sale ended at $ 2.7 million, without the house revealing the identity of the buyer.

The retail version includes 138 drawings

This holy grail for lovers of rare and precious books is presented as a thick album of 138 drawings with detailed landscapes, framed in a blue outline, each illustrating one of the most famous fables of the moralist and novelist Jean de la Fontaine, such as The Frog Who wants to be the size of a bull, a grasshopper, an ant, or a crow and a fox.

The sold album is the only intact volume of La Fontaine’s drawings

These drawings, made in the early 1730s, were assembled with brush and black ink. To date, this is the only intact volume of illustrations drawn by Audrey Lafontaine, as Steve Alsteen, international director of vintage drawings at Christie’s, explained that the second volume was present. But it was cut up and distributed among the museums, according to what was reported by the Caminteresse website, according to the agency “Agence France Presse”.

It is noteworthy that the album, which was sold at Sotheby’s auction house in 1996 for 550 thousand pounds sterling, is part of the Jackie Elie Safra collection, including 78 works from the 17th to the 19th century, for about $ 18.5 million.