Fernando Pizarro y Orellana | A rare volume glorifying the Spanish Empire

The Collection of Jay I. Kislak: Sold to Benefit the Kislak Family Foundation

Fernando Pizarro y Orellana

Varones ilustres del nuevo mundo. Descubridores, conquistadores, y pacificadores del opulento, dilatado, y poderoso imperio de las Indias Occidentales. ... Con un discurso legal de la obligacion que tienen los reyes a premiear los Servicios sus Vassallos. ... Madrid: Diego Diaz de la Carrera, 1639

Folio (290 x 196 mm). Half-title, encomium-leaf preceding the title, printer's ornaments, decorated initials, printed notes in the margins, head- and tail-pieces; foxed and browned, large dampstaining to first few leaves, earlier ownership inscription to blank, Hh2 trimmed with slight loss to notes on verso, a2 in the discurso legal trimmed with loss at foot, occasional marginal chips and short closed tears. In contemporary calf re-backed and re-cornered, boards stamped with gilt armorial seal reading "The Society of Writers to the Signet," spine with 2 red morocco labels lettered in gilt; boards rubbed and worn.

First edition. This significant volume glorifying the Spanish Empire includes accounts of the lives of Christopher Colombus, Hernan Cortes, Francisco, Juan, Hernando and Gonzalo Pizarro, Diego Garcia de Paredes and others. The author, who describes himself as the great grandson of Francisco Pizarro, seeks in the second part—the discurso legal—to remind King Philip IV of Spain of the reward that Charles V had promised the author's ancestor for his conquests: the title of marqués and twenty-thousand vassals. Pizarro mentions in his preface a second volume, which was never published but exists in manuscript. 

Rare, particularly with the half-title and encomium-leaf.

REFERENCE:

Palau 227687; Medina 999; Sabin 63189

PROVENANCE:

Sotheby's London, 23 November 1991, lot 340