Aristotle, Opera, Lyon, 1581, Parisian red morocco gilt for Bartolomeo Cenami

ARISTOTELES. Aristotelis Stagyritae opera, post omnes quae in hunc usque diem prodierunt editiones, summo studio emaculata, & ad Graecum exemplar diligenter recognita ab A. Iacobo Martino doctore medico ac philosopho (Tomus alter). Lyon: Étienne Michel (volume 2: Barthélemy Honorat), 1581

A fine Parisian binding made for the Italian merchant and banker Bartolomeo Cenami (1556-1611), who arrived in Paris in the late 1570s and became a royal creditor to Henri III and Henri IV. So far sixteen Parisian bindings have been assigned to his ownership, featuring the same centre and corner stamps with the lion in the centre and on the spine, which are attributed to the Parisian bindery established by Nicolas Ève and continued by his son Clovis. For a full list of the bindings, see Bibliotheca Brookeriana I, 11 October 2024, lot 41; this is number 1 in the census of bindings. Three other bindings for Cenami feature in the present sale: lot 1126 (Horace, 1580) and lot 1237 (Vergil, 1599), both folios similarly bound in red morocco, and lot 1231 (Vegetius), a smaller book in tan morocco; the Bibliotheca Brookeriana contained seven Cenami bindings in total. It is thought that the library was housed the Cenami family palazzo in Lucca, perhaps after Bartolomeo’s son Vincenzo returned from Paris in around 1636, and probably dispersed in Lucca in the eighteenth century, though there is no later provenance visible in the present volume. The excised section of the title-page may have contained the inscription of Francesco Maria Conti who owner two other Cenami bindings (including lot 1237).