Mexia, Pedro

Estimate

15,000 - 20,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

MEXIA, Pedro
Della selva di varia lettione parti cinque nelle quali si contengono ammaestramenti dottissimi, et varii et diversi discorsi cosi appartenenti alle scientie, come alle Historie degli huomini & de gli animali. Venetia: Francesco Sansovino, 1560
Ink,paper and cow

8vo (5 7/8 x 4 in.; 149 x 100 mm). Initial woodcuts; light dampstains. Contemporary calf, badge of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a gilt bear chained to a ragged staff with a crescent for difference, his initials 'R D' in a gilt double-fillet frame; some neat restorations to head of spine.

Provenance

Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (armorial binding) — John Peyto Verney, Lord Willoughby de Broke (bookplate) — Robert John Verney, Lord of Willoughby de Broke (bookplate) — Bernard Quaritch (Catalogue "Bookbindings", 1921, 18). acquisition: H.D. Lyon, after 1978

Literature

CNCE 30982; not in Italian STC; not in Harvard; not in Sabin; not in Brunet; not in Graesse; Nixon, "Elizabethan Gold-Tooled bindings," in Essays in Honour of Victor Scholderer, Mainz, 1970, p. 228, no. 19; Nixon, Five Centuries of English Bookbinding, 16

Catalogue Note

A Robert Dudley armorial binding on a rare Italian edition of Mexia's major work, first published in Seville in 1540.

Lord Robert Dudley, the second Englishman after Thomas Wotton to commission gold-tooled bindings, counted 232 books among his possessions in an inventory prepared after his death; over eighty are known to have survived.

This binding of about 1560 belongs to the "Frame Group," the second of four early groups of Dudley bindings identified by H.M. Nixon: "This consist of twenty bindings all with Dudley's large badge, and the initials R.D. added with hand tools. The decoration is simple, consisting of a two-line frame with corner fleurons. … They appear to have been bound within a year or two of 1560, the last imprint date."