Bizzarri, Varia opuscula, Venice, Aldus, 1565, blue morocco by Bozerian, Renouard's copy

Bizzarri, Pietro. Petri Bizzari varia opuscula, quorum indicem sequens pagina demonstrabit. Venice: Aldus [Paolo Manuzio], 1565

The Renouard-Heber copy in a fine Bozérian binding.

Bizzarri (1526-1585) was an Italian Protestant who travelled northern Europe before settling in England in 1549, in the entourage of Francis Russell (later earl of Bedford), returning to the Continent on the accession of Mary. He dedicated his tracts and poems to various European royals and nobles, in an endless search for patronage. He returned to Venice in 1564 and became one of William Cecil's intelligencers.

8vo (157 x 104 mm). Italic type, 28 lines plus headline. collation: A-T⁸ V⁴: 156 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-pages, woodcut initials and headpieces.

binding: Straight-grained navy morocco gilt by Bozérian (163 x 112 mm), flat spine gilt, gilt edges, cream watered silk endleaves, some deckle edges. (Flyleaves slightly darkened.)

provenance: Antoine-Augustin Renouard (but without his inventory number), Catalogue de la bibliothèque d'un amateur (Paris, 1819), III, p.283 ("De première reliure et comme broché") — Evans, sale of Renouard's library, 26-30 June 1828, lot 60, £4-4s, to Thomas Thorpe — purchase note on flyleaf (by Richard Heber?), "Renouard's sale, £6.16.6, commission 13.4, [total] £7.10.0", [perhaps Richard Heber, sale, part one, Sotheby and Son, 10 April 1834, lot 827, 18s, to Thorpe] — Lt.-Col. Sir George Lindsay Holford (1860-1926), sale, Sotheby's, 5-9 December 1927, lot 100, £8-10s, to Bernard Quaritch — Sir Robert Henry Abdy (1896-1976), sale, Paris, 29-30 April 1976, lot 24 — Michel Wittock (1936-2020), morocco booklabel, sale, Alde & Bertrand Meaudre, Paris, 24 October 2013, lot 5. acquisition: Purchased from Wittock sale. references: UCLA 736; Edit16 6175; Renouard 198/15; Paul Culot, Relieurs et reliures décorées en France aux époques Directoire et Empire: cinquante ateliers en quelque deux cents reliures conservées à la Bibliotheca Wittockiana (Brussels 1995), no. 80 (illustrated)