Dante, La comedia, Venice, 1544, red morocco Apollo and Pegasus binding by Maestro Luigi for Grimaldi

DANTE ALIGHIERI. La comedia di Dante Aligieri con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello. Venice: Francesco Marcolini for A. Vellutello, June 1544

FIRST VELLUTELLO EDITION, FROM THE CELEBRATED LIBRARY OF THE GENOESE BANKER GIOVANNI BATTISTA GRIMALDI (C. 1524-C. 1612), WITH HIS DISTINCTIVE APOLLO AND PEGASUS MEDALLION ON THE COVERS. His library was substantial; Anthony Hobson, who discovered the name of the collector in his monograph Apollo and Pegasus: an enquiry into the formation and dispersal of a Renaissance library (Amsterdam, 1975), identified 169 surviving volumes. The collection seems to have been created in a short space of time; while Grimaldi lived into the seventeenth century, these Apollo and Pegasus bindings all date from the later 1540s, and the latest known volume has an imprint of 1548. Surviving letters between Grimaldi and the humanist scholar Claudio Tolomei (1492-1556) in Rome document the commissioning of the library, and it is most likely Tolomei who devised the Apollo and Pegasus impresa and motto to be used on the bindings, in imitation of the books bound for Apollonio Filareto (see Bibliotheca Brookeriana I, 11 October 2023, lot 10). A letter from Tolomei also describes the collection as “una libraria finita”, a complete library in itself, needing no further acquisitions.

All Grimaldi’s surviving books have the title lettered on the covers, and the colour of the binding reflected the contents, with modern books in Italian and Spanish bound in red, as here, and Latin works in a darker colour. There were two versions of the Apollo and Pegasus stamp, the vertical version used for folio books and the horizontal one used for smaller format books, which form the bulk of the collection. More than half of these books were bound by Marcantonio Guillery, a binder and bookseller in Rome, who also sourced many of the books; other volumes were bound in Rome by Niccolò Franzese or, as here, Maestro Luigi.

The Grimaldi library was dispersed between two branches of the family, one in Naples and one in Genoa, and books from the latter started to appear in other collections during the seventeenth century. The Genoese part remained in the family for longer, probably until the early nineteenth century. Their significance resulted in fake Apollo and Pegasus bindings appearing in the late nineteenth century (see Bibliotheca Brookeriana V, lot 1041).

The present volume is intriguing for the ownership inscriptions scribbled to the rear pastedown by members of the Grimaldi family. The name "Honorato Grimaldi" is written three times, and the name "Luca" twice. Hobson notes that these were the names of the grand-nephew and great-grand-nephew, respectively, of Giovanni Battista Grimaldi. Indeed, the present copy was one of three known annotated volumes that allowed Hobson to prove that the Apollo and Pegasus bindings had been executed for Grimaldi and not for Cardinal Farnese. Equally fascinating are the handful of marginal annotations in the Inferno, and the 6-line manuscript list of currency conversions (possibly relating to book purchases) to the blank verso of the final text leaf, very plausibly both in the same humanist hand.

For another magnificent Apollo and Pegasus binding in the present sale, see lot 1680 (Estienne).