One Thousand Years of Bibliophily from the 11Th to the 15Th Century
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One Thousand Years of Bibliophily From the 11th to the 15th Century PrPh Books Philobiblon 26 E 64th Street via Antonio Bertoloni 45 NY 10065 - New York 00197 - Roma +1 (646) 370-4657 +39 06 4555 5970 [email protected] via Borgonuovo 12 20121 - Milano +39 02 8907 6643 [email protected] Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco via Accademia Albertina 3bis Philobiblon Uk Ltd 10123 - Torino correspondence address: +39 011 81 77 114 Third Floor, Carrington House, [email protected] 126-130 Regent Street London, W1B 5SD One Thousand Years of Bibliophily From the 11th to the 15th 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) We are very pleased to present our new catalogue, celebrating five years since the 2013 opening of PrPh Gallery in New York by Italian booksellers Umberto Pregliasco and Filippo Rotundo, with an inauguration speech by the master of Italian culture Umberto Eco, who sadly passed away two years ago. The title Philobiblon is doubly significant: above all, it is a tribute to Richard de Bury’s Philobiblon, the most celebrated early manifesto on book collecting, a copy of which is proudly presented here. It also recalls the catalogue, published ten years ago, of our eponymous founding-partner bookshop, Philobiblon: Mille anni di bibliofilia dalx al xx secolo (2008). This was a marvellous tour through ten centuries of bibliophily, and just like its predecessor, the present catalogue offers a fascinating journey into the world of books. The coverage is wide and varied, ranging from an eleventh-century manuscript of Cicero’s Rhetorica to international Street art produced in the 2000s, testifying to the multifarious lines of our activity and the broadness of our interests. Many precious books have passed through our hands over these years; new collaborations have been initiated, above all with Govi Rare Books, which recently opened in New York; and stimulating projects have been undertaken. Throughout these activities, our focus remains on what makes an object unique and the distinctive features of individual copies, all of exceptional value in some way: the rarity of an edition, the magnificence of its illustrative apparatus, the preciousness of its binding, the eminence of its provenance. The catalogue is divided into three chronologically-organized volumes and includes numerous books ‘canonized’ in the renowned Printing and the Mind of Man and landmark Grolier Club exhibitions like One Hundred Influential American Books Printed Before 1900. The third volume is also supplemented with a series of indexes (authors and anonymous works; provenances; binders; artists, designers, and engravers; subjects) which we hope, alongside cross-references inserted into the catalogue itself, will facilitate both research and discovery. The first volume (From the 11th to the 15th Century; items nos. 1-44) includes, among others, the aforementioned Cicero written in late Carolinian; two early codices of Dante’s Commedia; a Florentine zibaldone of the 1450s; a finely illustrated fifteenth- century miscellany containing William of Saliceto’s Chirurgia; and Regiomontanus’ Calendarium, supplemented with diagrams and volvelles. The series of incunables offered here is remarkable: editiones principes of milestones in literature, history, and science; impeccable volumes with extraordinary provenances; copies embellished with illuminated pages, or exquisite woodcut illustrations; and the marvellous and enigmatic Tarocchi del Mantegna in its original book form. The second volume (The Sixteenth Century; items nos. 45-178) is entirely devoted to the Cinquecento and offers a vast survey of the period’s immense book production, including the celebrated Aldine series of Greek and Latin classics in portable octavo format; books printed in modern Greek, Aethiopic, Hebrew, and Arabic; finely illustrated chivalric literature; magnificent scientific works like Schöner’s Opera Mathematica, complete with working volvelles; an astonishing number of editions printed on blue paper, including such masterpieces as Dante’s Commedia, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Euclid’s Elementa; and a true testament to iconographic invention in the form of an engraved series of the Songes drolatiques. It is similarly difficult to summarize the great range contained in the third volume (From the 17th to the 21st Century; items nos. 179-290), which features works from the Seicento to the present day, including Shakespeare’s legendary First Folio and such modern literary classics as Don Quijote, Moby Dick, Pinocchio, The Great Gatsby, and Se questo è un uomo. The history of illustration is also highlighted here through, among others, sumptuous festival books, etchings by Canaletto, Tiepolo, and Piranesi, Goya’s Caprichos, and luxury artist books illustrated by Bonnard and Picasso. Among the great science books one finds such wonders as the Saggiatore by Galileo, a copy of Bacon’s De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum gifted by Peiresc to Gassendi, rare offprints signed by Babbage, and a ‘dream set’ of Darwin’s Narrative inscribed by Darwin himself along with Beagle Captain FitzRoy. Great attention has been paid to provenance across the selection, with a large number of copies from exceptional libraries of the early modern age, including those amassed by Giovanni Battista Grimaldi, Markus Fugger, the Pillone family, and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, often housed in precious bindings by leading ateliers and without regard to expense. The great bibliophily of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is likewise well represented with copies once owned by Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, Sir Thomas Phillipps, Antoine-Augustin Renouard, Charles Fairfax Murray, John Roland Abbey, and Giacomo Manzoni, to name but a few. Many of these books have also passed through the hands of outstanding figures in the history of antiquarian bookselling, such as Bernard Quaritch, Ulrico Hoepli, Leo S. Olschki, Giuseppe Martini, Tammaro De Marinis, Hans Peter Kraus, Martin Breslauer and Bernard M. Rosenthal. Finally, many of the works included in our selection are enriched with highly important marginal annotations. One example is especially significant in this regard: John Dee’s copy of Apollonius of Perga’s Conics, copiously annotated by Dee himself. In 1631, this copy was acquired by John Winthrop Jr. who brought it with him on his ocean crossing that same year, along with the rest of his notable library; upon arrival in Massachusetts Bay, this volume became the first recorded scientific book to reach the New World, bearing on its title-page Winthrop’s sigil, the hieroglyphic monad invented by Dee. In the bibliographical descriptions, signature collations and indication of types are given for editions printed up to the seventeenth century. For manuscripts, the quire collation generally takes account of missing leaves. The associated literature is quoted in short form, in keeping with standard bibliographies and catalogues. Nearly all items described are accompanied by one or more illustrations, usually reduced in size. A note indicates when the images are in the actual size of the original. O libri soli liberales et liberi, qui omni petenti tribuitis et omnes manumittitis vobis sedulo servientes, quot rerum millibus typice viris doctis recommendamini in scriptura nobis divinitus inspirita! O books, who alone are liberal and free, who give to all who ask of you and enfranchise all who serve you faithfully! (Richard de Bury, Philobiblon, Chapter I) Cicero’s Rhetorica Vetus from a Medieval German Scriptorium 1 Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC). De inventione. Decorated manuscript on parchment, in Latin. Southern Germany or Austria (monastery Rein, Styria?), end of the eleventh century – first half (possibly first decades) of the twelfth century. 330x240 mm. ii + 58 + i leaves. Complete. Eight quires. Collation: 1-78, 82. Modern foliation in pencil in the inner lower margin of each recto. Fols. 1r and 58v blanks. Quire marks in Roman located in the centre of the lower margin on the last page of quires 1-7, and written by at least two different scribes: quire marks i-iii are supplemented with the abbreviation sign –us, and decorated with serpentines; quire marks iv-vii between two simple dots. Text block: 220x110 mm, one column, 31 lines (fols. 1-33), 31- 33 lines (fols. 34-58); glosses in 66 lines (generally two lines of glosses correspond to one line of text). Ruled with lead point, double set of prickings for horizontal lines (a set for text, another set for glosses) survives on the outer margin of each leaf (apart from a few lightly trimmed leaves, in which only the pricking set for glosses are visible); prickings for vertical lines on the top and bottom of the leaves. The Cicero’s text is written in two different hands. The first hand (hand A), writing in black ink (in some lines the ink appears diluted), is responsible for the text and the extensive marginal and interlinear glosses on fols. 1v-33v: this is a neat regular late Caroline with angular features, revealing the transition to Gothic script. The abbreviation for –us touches the letter. Rustic capitals for headings; titles in red ink on fols. 1v (Marci Tullii Ciceronis in libru[m] Rethoric[arum] artium Pro[lo]g[us] incipit.), 3v (Lib[er] Primus Rethoric[arum] Incipit.), 31r (Marci Tullii Ciceronis Lib[er] Se[cun]di[s] Rethoric[arum] artiu[m] incipit.). A different hand in a later Caroline or Pregotica (hand B) is responsible for the text on fols. 34r-58r, written in chesnut-brown ink. In this case the letters are broader. A third hand (hand C), presumably from the second half of the twelfth century, has added in the margins of fols. 33v-41v numerous verses (versus leonini) unrelated to Cicero’s text. Hand C has also added the numbering of verses on the lower margins of the leaves. On fol. 1v a seven-line puzzle initial ‘S’ in blue, with red and yellow foliate infill, and red penwork decoration.