Philobiblon Vol 2

302 Pages·2017·9.2 MB·Italian

One Thousand Years of Bibliophily
The Sixteenth Century
PrPh Books Philobiblon
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One Thousand Years of Bibliophily
The Sixteenth Century
One Thousand Years of Bibliophily
From the 11th to the 15th Century
(items nos. 1 - 44)
The Sixteenth Century
(items nos. 45 - 178)
From the 17th to the 21st Century
(items nos. 179 - 290)

(actual size)
Two first Aldine editions
in original Venetian speaking-binding
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Catullus, Gaius Valerius (ca. 84-ca. 54 BC) – Tibullus, Albius (ca. 55-19 BC) –
Propertius, Sextus Aurelius (47-14 BC). Catullus. Tibullus. Propetius. Venice,
Aldo Manuzio, January 1502. (bound with:) Lucanus, Marcus Anneus (35-65).
Lucanus. Venice, Aldo Manuzio, April 1502.
Two works in one volume, 8° (161x99 mm) I. Three parts. Collation: A-F8; 2A-D8, E4; a-i8. [152] leaves.
Italic type. Blank spaces for capitals, with printed guide letters. II. Collation: a-r8, s4. [140] leaves. Italic
type. Blank spaces for capitals, with printed guide letters. Contemporary Venetian brown morocco over
pasteboards. Covers within blind border of fillets and foliate roll, one small gilt ivy-leaf at each corner.
At centre at the upper cover the inscription ‘cat. tib. prop. lvca.’, lettered in gilt; on the lower cover a
sun-shaped tool. Traces of four pairs of ties. Italian-style spine with three double bands alternating with
four single bands, underlined by blind fillets. Darkened edges. Corners somewhat worn, joints slightly
cracked, minor loss to the extremities of spine. A good copy, first leaf of the first bound edition partly
loose, with a small hole affecting a few letters or words on the verso. Some marginal spots. Early inked
foliation in the outer upper margin, the three title lines in a frame inked by the earliest owner of the
copy. In the same hand some marginalia, pen trials, reading marks, and the annotation on the verso of
fol. i7 of the first edition, ‘Quand’io veggio la terra / Vestir di nuouo un bianco uelo / Et l’acqua al uerno
conuertirsi in uetro / Et chi poi ueggio nel girar al ciclo / Al Tempo che uien dietro / La fredda naue
distillarsi, e il gielo / Allhora io dico, ahi donna di guai temp[...] / In quel ghiaccio crudel, ch’in uoi sta
sempre’. A few pencilled bibliographical notes on the pastedown.
Provenance: Xanchius Voconius (long contemporary ownership inscription on the recto of the first leaf,
‘Xanchi Voconij sum, ne me obsecro sibi surripias Fur, nullius enim ad manus p[er]venire posse, quin
eius desyderiu[m] egerrime laturus essem’; on the verso of the last leaf are annotations, in his own hand,
of verses from Giovanni Gioviano Pontano’s De amore coniugali); The Property of The Hon. Viscount
Hinchinbrooke, M.P. and Other Properties including ... a few Fine Early French and Italian Bindings, sale
Sotheby’s 22 December 1957, lot 414; purchased by the English bookseller and bibliographer Graham
Pollard (1903-1976; his purchase inscription on the front pastedown).
A fine volume, in its contemporary binding, comprised of two rare Aldine editions, both
printed in 1502 in the highly portable octavo format which was introduced by Aldus for the
Latin classics beginning with the Virgil of 1501.
The volume contains the first Aldine edition of the Latin elegiac poets (generally published
together following the Venetian princeps of 1472), followed by the first Aldus edition of
Lucanus’ Pharsalia, which first appeared in Rome in 1469.
The Aldine collection of Latin elegias poetry is presented here in its first issue, which bears
the misspelling of ‘Propetius’ on the title leaf, along with Aldus’ prefatory letter on the verso
erroneously addressed to Marino Sanuto Benedicti filio, instead of Leonardi filio.
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As Fletcher has suggested, the particular sequence in the signature of the leaves – Aldus
rarely adopted the reduplication of signature-marks, as here – suggests the possibility that
each part could have been bound separately, and therefore could had a separate circulation.
The volume is in its original binding, executed in Venice. The covers are decorated with
tools widely used on Venetian bindings in the first decades of the sixteenth century,
including, among others, the ivy-leaf tool – rather improperly referred to as the Aldine
leaf – which is stamped here at each corner.
I. Adams C-1137; STC Italian 160; Renouard Alde, 39.16; Ahmanson-Murphy 52; H G. Fletcher,
“Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius”, Idem, New Aldine Studies, San Francisco, 1988, pp. 100-106. II.
Adams L-1557; STC Italian 395; Renouard Alde, 33.3; Ahmanson-Murphy 56.
Dante in forma piccola
— Pietro Bembo —
46
Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321). Le terze rime di Dante. Venice, Aldo Manuzio, August 1502.
8° (147x98 mm). Collation: a-z8, A-G8, H4. [244] leaves. Complete with fol. I2 blank. Italic type. On the
verso of the last leaf, woodcut Aldine device. Contemporary limp vellum. Smooth spine, with author’s
name inked by an early hand. Covers slightly stained, edges reinforced with old parchment. A very
good, unsophisticated copy. Minor repairs to the blank margins of the first quires, pale waterstains, a
few wormholes to the outer blank margin of quire o, without any loss.
Provenance: ‘Ad usum D. Petri Archipresbyt.ri Pavese [?]’ (eighteenth-century ownership inscription on
fol. a2r); the American writer and poet Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909; ownership inscription on
fol. a1r ‘F. Marion Crawford 1902’); gifted to his daughter Eleanor Boccapaduli-Crawford (note on fol.
a1r ‘To my dear daughter Eleanor, Sorrento, Christmas Day, 1906’).
The first Aldine edition of Dante’s Commedia, as well as the first issue ever to bear the
Aldine device – a dolphin wrapped around an anchor – used thereafter in all Aldine
publications. This edition – in contrast to the tradition entitled by Manutius simply Le terze
rime – signals a linguistic restoration of the work and an important advance in the recovery
of the original text. It was carefully prepared by the Venetian patrician and humanist Pietro
Bembo (1470-1547), who used as his primary source an authoritative mid-fourteenth-
century manuscript taken from the library of his father, Bernardo, which Boccaccio had
sent as a gift to Petrarch between 1351 and 1353 (Biblioteca Vaticana, Vat.Lat. 3199).
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The second identified source is the Landino edition of 1481, which had become
the standard text of the Commedia by the end of the fifteenth century. According to
Bembo’s own notes in the copy-text – now in the Vatican Library – the editorial work
began on 6 July 1501 and was finished on 26 July 1502. Aldus published the text in
August 1502; it is assumed that Bembo sent the quires in sequence to the printer as he
finished work on them.
The Aldine Dante is quite different from all previous editions of the poem. For the first
time the Commedia is set in italic type and printed in the easily portable octavo format,
unencumbered by extensive commentary which, from the 1477 Vindeliniana onwards,
had always accompanied Dante’s cantiche in the earlier and larger-format editions. The
colophon is followed by Aldus’ warning against counterfeited editions of his Commedia,
“Cautum est ne quis hunc impune imprimat, uendat ue librum nobis inuitis”.
Adams D-83; STC Italian 209; Renouard Alde, 34.5; Ahmanson-Murphy 59; Batines i, pp. 60-62; Mambelli 17.
The Lyonese counterfeit, even rarer than the original Aldine
47
Petrarca, Francesco (1304-1374). Le cose vulgari di Messer Francesco Petrarcha.
[Lyon, ca. 1502].
8° (145x92 mm). Collation: a-y8, z4, A8. [188] leaves. Complete with fols. u6, x5, y5, and z4 blank. Lyons
italic type. Nearly contemporary vellum, over pasteboards. Smooth spine with title inked vertically by
an early hand. Edges speckled brownish red, head-edge darkened. A few stains to the covers. A very
good copy, the upper margin slightly trimmed, partly affecting the early inked foliation. A few spots, a
small stain on fol. l7. An early hand has added in the final leaf an index of Petrarch’s poems included
in the volume.
Provenance: Alessandro Grassi (seventeenth-century ownership inscription on the recto of the first leaf);
purchased by John Barker in Rome in 1671 (ownership inscription on the front pastedown, ‘Roma, 15.
d’Apr- 1671. di Sig.r Ales. Grassi, incontro il palazzo del Gouernatore’; also in Barker’s own hand is the note
on the front pastedown ‘v. Hor. l. I. Sat. 10’, and a passage taken from the Dell’Huomo di lettere by Daniello
Bartoli on the recto of the front flyleaf ‘Fauorino auuisa [Gell. l. 17 c. 12] che per aguzzare l’ingegno, quando
dall’otio di molto tempo ci paia rintuzzato, e ottuso, ottimo mezzo sia prendere à trattare materie inutili, e
allegre. P. Bartoli dell’Huomo di lettere, p. 339’); Kenneth Rapoport (ex-libris on the front pastedown).
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The exceedingly rare Lyonese counterfeit, in its first issue, of the celebrated Petrarca
volgare printed by Aldus in Venice in 1501, and edited for him by the outstanding
humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) on the basis of Petrarch’s autograph manuscript of
the Canzoniere, held at the Vatican Library. This is one of the three earliest of all Aldine
counterfeits, alongside those of the Virgil and Juvenal.
The volume was issued entirely anonymously and without date, but the printing
might be attributed to Balthasar de Gabiano from Asti (Piedmont) – according to
Baudrier the originator of the Lyonese italic type –, or other printers who were active
in Lyon, such as Jacques Myt, who, together with the dealer Barthélemy Troth, had
immediately perceived the commercial possibilities of Aldus’ revolutionary series of
easily portable octavo-format volumes, printed in the fine italic type designed for the
Venetian printer by the Bolognese punch-cutter Francesco Griffo. Despite the ten-year
privilege granted by the Venetian Senate which gave Aldus exclusive right to its use,
this font was imitated or counterfeited by certain unscrupulous Lyonese printers who
produced a group of pirated editions closely imitating the Aldine format and layout,
though obviously omitting the colophon, prefaces, and privileges. On 16 March 1503
Aldus was compelled to print the broadside Monitum in Lugdunenses typographos,
a warning against the counterfeited Lyonese editions, in which he explained how to
distinguish them from his genuine editions.
In the Lyonese Petrarch the original colophon, Aldus’ address to readers, and the errata
leaf are all omitted. Further, a few misprints are detectable: the general title on fol. a1r
reads Le cose vulgari in place of the original Le cose volgari, the divisional title on fol.
a1v is printed as Sonetti et canzone in vita di madonna Laura, and not correctly Sonetti et
canzoni in vita di madonna Laura, while the Aldine divisional title Sonetti et canzoni in
morte di madonna Laura on fol. n3 became Sonetti et canzoni in morte di madona Laura
in the counterfeit. Further, the quire k is signed ‘K’.
Two different issues of this Lyonese counterfeit are known; according to David J. Shaw
they could have been printed in about 1502 and 1508, respectively. This copy belongs
to the first group; an especially noteworthy point about this state is represented by the
Provençal verse ‘Dreç 7 [i.e., ‘et’] rayson es quieu ciant em demori’ printed on fol. d6v
(Sonetto 70, Lasso me, ch’i non so in qual parte pieghi), which here faithfully adheres to
the original, while in the late counterfeit datable to 1508 the same phrase is transformed,
or better, translated into French as “Droit et raison es que Ie chante damor”.
Renouard Alde, 308.17; Baudrier vii, 15; Ahmanson-Murphy 1101; De Marinis, Appunti e ricerche
bibliografiche, Milano 1940, p. 328, pl. cclx; H. G. Fletcher, “The 1501 Petrarch”, Idem, New Aldine
Studies, San Francisco 1988, pp. 95-99; C. Pulsoni, “Pietro Bembo e la tradizione della canzone ‘Drez
et razo es qu’ieu ciant em demori’”, Rivista di Letteratura Italiana, 11 (1993), pp. 283-304, esp. 285-
290; D. J. Shaw, “The Lyons Counterfeit of Aldus’s Italic Type. A New Chronology”, D. V. Reidy (ed.),
The Italian Book 1465-1800. Studies presented to Dennis E. Rhodes, London 1993, pp. 117-133; C.
Pulsoni, I classici italiani di Aldo Manuzio e le loro contraffazioni lionesi, Roma 2002.
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