Egnazio, De Caesaribus, Venice, Heirs of Aldo & Torresano, 1516, contemporary German pigskin

Egnazio, Giovanni Battista. In hoc volumine haec continentur. Ioannis Baptistae Egnatij Veneti De Caesaribus libri III a dictatore Caesare ad Constantinum Paleologum ... Neruae & Traiani atque Adriani principum vitae ex Dione, Georgio Merula interprete. Aelius Spartianus Iulius Capitolinus Lampridius Flauius Vopiscus Trebellius Pollio Vulcatius Gallicanus ab eodem Egnatio castigati. Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, July 1516

First Aldine edition, exceedingly rare, of Egnazio’s significant history of Roman emperors, which extended the Scriptores Historiae Augustae down to Maximilian I. Giovanni Battista Cipelli, known by his humanistic name Egnazio, was a private teacher in Venice starting when he was a teenager in 1494, then professor of eloquence. From 1506 to 1520 he held an office in the Aldine Academy; he had a long and fruitful collaboration with Aldo, and was named an executor of his will.

8vo (160 x 91 mm). Roman and Italic type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: HS⁸ Ab-Hi⁸ AaA-DdD⁸ EeE⁴ a-z⁸ aa-oo⁸ (HS7-8 blanks, Hi8 a blank): 404 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, early annotations in ink. (Stray spots.)

binding: Contemporary German pigskin over beveled wooden boards (171 x 105 mm), covers elaborately tooled blind with roll tooled borders, portrait stamp (83x45 mm) on upper cover of John Frederick I, Duke of Saxony (1503-1554) and on lower cover (84x50 mm) of Maximillian II, Emperor (1527-1576), signed I.B. (Unassigned by Haebler, possibly Augsburg, Nuremberg, Wittenberg), brass clasps, spine with raised bands in five compartments, first and fifth lettered in ink though heavily faded, edges stained red. (Restoration to the hinges, a few cracks at the spine, a bit rubbed.)

provenance: Unidentified owner, running titles and extensive table of contents and appendix in a contemporary hand — Albert Ehrman (1890-1969), bookplate to front pastedown; inkstamp to rear pastedown. acquisition: Purchased from Bernard Quaritch, London, 1969. references: UCLA 154; Renouard 76/4; Edit16 18052; USTC 828062