Bibliotheca Brookeriana: A Renaissance Library. The Aldine Collection D-M
Bibliotheca Brookeriana: A Renaissance Library. The Aldine Collection D-M
Auction Closed
October 18, 08:42 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Horatius Flaccus, Quintus. Horatius. (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, May 1501)
First Aldine edition of Horace and the second book printed by Aldo in portable format in his new italic type. "The Horace of May 1501 was the second of Aldus’s enchiridia, following the publication in April of a Virgil. Aldus may have found inspiration for his enchiridia series, and in particular both the Virgil and the Horace, from pocket-size manuscripts copied in humanistic cursive hand by the Paduan scribe Bartolomeo Sanvito for Bernardo and Pietro Bembo. From Aldus’s dedicatory letter to Pietro in the 1514 Virgil, we learn that Bernardo, by then in his early eighties but still very active, sharp-minded and generous in spirit, had agreed to lend his 'libri portatiles' to Aldus in view of new Aldine editions. It is therefore conceivable that Bernardo had done it before and that the elegant Horace copied by Sanvito for Bernardo (now King’s College Cambridge, MS 34) may have been among pocket-size books borrowed by Aldus from Bembo at the time of his first Horace, as suggested by the similarities in dimensions between the manuscript and Aldus’s 1501 edition" ("Aldus Manutius: A humanist printer for humanist readers," Cambridge University Library online exhibition; https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/manutius/).
8vo (166 x 95 mm). Italic types, 30 lines plus headline. collation: a-s8: 143 (of 144) leaves (lacking terminal blank s8). 3-, 4-, and 6-line initial spaces with guide-letters. Rubricated throughout in red and blue, 6-line initials illuminated in gold or in green, red, or blue on gold background. (Title a trifle soiled and foxed, occasional soiling or staining, chiefly marginal.)
binding: Eighteenth-century English polished calf (172 x 109 mm), spine gilt in six compartments, plain endpapers and edges, lower edge ink-lettered "Horatius Tibullus." (Extremities and joints quite rubbed, spine restored with addition of oddly spelled maroon morocco label, "Horis.")
provenance: Unidentified owner(s), illuminated and rubricated; contemporary and later marginalia and underscoring — "M.S.," otherwise unidentified owner, eighteenth-century monogram bookplate with motto in Greek — Francis and Judy Martin, early twentieth-century inscriptions — Sir John Randolph Shane Leslie, 3rd Bt. (1885-1971), bookplate, inscription, "given me by Judy Rhodes (Martin) during the London Blitz during which she died. R.I.P. I had the burial service over her at Golders Green." acquisition: Purchased from Thomas Thorp, St Albans, 1982. references: UCLA 41; Adams H854; Aldo Manuzio tipografo 45; Grolier/Aldus 27, 30; Edit16 22672; Renouard 27/4; USTC 835851