Panciera, Trattati, Florence, 1492, modern calf tooled in period style

Ugo Panciera

Trattati. Florence: Antonio di Bartolommeo Miscomini, 9 June 1492

4to (208 x 136mm.), 100 leaves, [*]² a–l⁸ m⁴ n⁶, 27 lines, roman type, woodcut printer's device below colophon, modern blond calf tooled in period style

Ugo Panciera (or Panziera) was a Franciscan friar from Tuscany, born around 1270, who went on a Franciscan mission to Constantinople in the early fourteenth century, dying at Pera in around 1330. His spiritual tracts were probably written while in the convent at Pera-Galata.

This copy contains the additional quire n which was printed later and added to unsold copies of this first printed edition, in response to the publication of another edition, also in Florence, on 15 December 1492, by Lorenzo Morgiani and Johannes Petri (copied from Miscomini's edition but with a more compact layout on fewer sheets of paper and therefore cheaper). The December edition proclaimed its superiority with the presence of an additional chapter, not present in Miscomini's text, so Miscomini added an additional quire to remaining copies still in his possession, to include this chapter (Paul F. Gehl, "Watermark evidence for the competitive practices of Antonio Miscomini", The Library 15 (1993), 281-305, pp.209-301). This is also the first work in which Miscomini used printed foliation (ibid., p.302). Gehl opines that copies with this additional quire n are "very rare" (p. 304).

LITERATURE:

ISTC ip00025000