SZYK, Arthur (1894-1951). Le Statut de Kalisz . Paris: Table Ronde, 1932. Limited edition, a copy with exceptional provenance and poignancy, printed for the President of Poland, of the splendid charter of rights granted to the Jews of Poland by Boleslav the Pious in 1264 and confirmed in 1334, in 1447 and in 1467. The Jewish artist Arthur Szyk produced this 500-copy facsimile edition of his original illuminated manuscript in the collection of the Jewish Museum in New York in the context of rising anti-Semitism in Poland and Europe in the 1920s. He was inspired by the most lavishly-illustrated manuscripts of 15th-century France, and committed to what he called ‘The Golden Book of Polish Jewry’ and what has since been also referred to as the ‘Jewish Magna Carta’. At once scribe and illuminator, Szyk sought to produce a manuscript that fully expressed ‘the glorification of an important text which elevates the human race’ J. Ansell). Nine languages feature in the text: Latin, French, Polish, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, and Yiddish. This limited edition facsimile of the original manuscript was printed five years after its creation. It is estimated that only about 50 copies of this work survived the bombing of a warehouse in Warsaw during World War II. This copy is numbered 3 of 500, underlying the utter pre-eminence of its intended recipient: Jgnacy Mociski, elected President of Poland in 1926, was the candidate supported by Józef Piłsudski, leader of the May 1926 coup d'état whom Szyk regarded as the true guarantor of democracy – to the President the artist addresses his most splendid expression of hopes for a future of equality and peace between Poles and Jews in his native country. Provenance : Jgnacy Mociski, president of the Polish Republic (his nominative copy, as printed in the limitation leaf).