[Gisele Bündchen, Brazilian supermodel, and Michel Comte, Swiss fashion photographer.] Autograph Note Signed from Bündchen to Comte, accompanying sixty-three of his photographs of her, in groups of three or four similar images, from various shoots.

Bündchen’s career began in London in 1998. Since 2001, she has been one of the highest-paid fashion models in the world. In 2007, Forbes listed her as the sixteenth-richest woman in the entertainment industry. In 2019 Claudia Schiffer described her as the last of the supermodels. Comte’s fashion and portrait photography have appeared in a wide range of publications, primarily Italian Vogue. In 2000 he was named Photographer of the year by PHOTO magazine. The present collection consists of sixty-three photographs of Bündchen (five in colour and fifty-eight in black and white), evidently taken by Comte, laid down with a covering note to him from her, on twenty-one pages over eleven leaves of foolscap 8vo, extracted from an album. In good condition, lightly aged. Covering the whole of the first page is the Autograph Note Signed by ‘Gisele Bündchen’, 16 may 1999, with a curl at the end of the signature enclosing a childish smiling face. At top right is a very simple drawing of a flower. The note is in a childish hand and is headed ‘Michel’ and reads ‘Obrigada por tudo. Tive um timpo moravilhoso. [sic] Um muito carinho / Gisele Bündchen / 16-05-99’. On the reverse of the leaf are three colour photographs, variations of the same scene of Bündchen posing in front of a crowd of tourists, the pages that follow carry similar triplets or quartets of photographs taken at the same time. The 31 photographs on the first ten pages, arranged in ten groups, appear to come from the same outdoor shoot, with Bündchen striking a pose while surrounded by members of the public. The two pages that follow carry five associated images of Bündchen in a bikini, striding across a rocky beach. These are followed by another five over two pages, this time showing Bündchen’s head and shoulders as she drapes what looks like a mink stole over her head. There are also eight images in two groups of Bündchen screaming, and a group of four that show her smoking a cigarette while adorned in a somewhat garish necklace and earings. The latter group is mounted on a leaf captioned ‘ “Gisele im Cannes” I[talian]. Vogue / France, May’. Mounted on the twenty-second page of the eleven leaves is what appears to be an unrelated item: a letter in German, also written in a childish hand in felt-tip pen, with large illegible signature (something like ‘Mamti Rigis’), dated from Paris, 19 may 1999. It reads: ‘Merci Michel, / Das war bis jetzt das beste Fotoshooting das ich bisher machen konnte! Sehr erfischend, mit super Ideen! Ich hoffe auf ein baldiges wiedersehen: vielleicht mit Pferden. / Paris. 19. Mai ’99’.