Cicero, Officiorum libri tres, Venice, Aldus, 1545, Parisian calf gilt by Grolier's Last Binder

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Marci Tullii Ciceronis Officiorum libri tres: Cato maior, vel de senectute: Laelius, vel de amicitia: Paradoxa stoicorum sex: Somnium Scipionis, ex libro sexto De republica. Venice: Paolo Manuzio, (March) 1545

See the following lot for a set of Cicero also by Grolier's Last Binder.

8vo (157 x 97 mm). Italic text, 30 lines plus headline. collation: A-P⁸ Q¹⁰: 130 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso.

binding: Parisian brown calf (162 x 104 mm), ca. 1560, richly gold tooled by Grolier's Last Binder, sides decorated with large arabesque centerpiece, large azured trefoil in corners, within a frame of double gilt fillets, flat spine with small gilt stamps, edges gilt with title "OFFICIA TVLL" lettered in ink along fore-edge, stubs from two pairs of ties. (Ends of spine repaired, upper joint cracked at foot.)

provenance: Sotheby & Co., London, 22-23 June 1970, lot 206, £20, to Maggs — Marie-Françoise Robert, Franck Baillie and Jacques Benelli, sale, Paris, 1 February 2008, lot 112 — Pierre Bergé, sale, Paris, 16 December 2020, lot 1009. acquisition: Purchased from Pierre Bergé sale. references: UCLA 323 (no copy listed); Edit16 12267; Renouard 131/7