Quintilianus, Venice, Aldus, 1514, later marbled calf gilt

Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius

[Institutio oratoria] (Venice: in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresani, August 1514)

4to (204 x 127mm.), woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, without blank leaf *4, later tree calf with a gilt floral border, spine gilt in compartments, small paper repair to title-page, some staining from washing of annotations (occasionally severe), crudely repaired along joints

First Aldine edition of Quintilian's influential late first-century manual of rhetoric, prepared by Andrea Navagero and Giovanni Battista Ramusio.

LITERATURE:

Aldo Manuzio tipografo 126; Edit16 54150; Renouard 68/5; UCLA 124

PROVENANCE:

J. Henderson Smith, engraved bookplate dated 1896 and inscription dated Balliol College, Oxford, 1894; V. di Ravelli, Londres, Feb. 1913, inscription on verso of flyleaf; D.L. Cumming, signature on verso of flyleaf

V. di Ravelli was the assumed name of the South African concert pianist Jan Bosman di Ravelli Vere (1882-1967) who was also a student of Classics and Arabic.