Giovio, Le vite di Leon decimo, et d'Adriano sesto, Florence, 1549, Parisian armorial binding by Wotton Binder C for Paolo Giordano Orsini
Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
GIOVIO, PAOLO. Le vite di Leon decimo, et d’Adriano sesto sommi pontefici, et del cardinal Pompeo Colonna. Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, February 1549
A VOLUME FROM THE LIBRARY OF PAOLO GIORDANO ORSINI (1541–1585), THE MUCH MALIGNED DUCA DI BRACCIANO, suspected of murdering both his first wife, Isabella de’ Medici, daughter of Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo, and the husband of his mistress, Vittoria Accoramboni. This copy of Giovio's Le vite di Leon decimo belongs to a group of some twenty-six volumes bound for the fifteen-year-old Paolo Giordano during his first and only visit to Paris, in May–September 1556, when he accompanied the apostolic legate Cardinal Carafa to secure an alliance with Henri II against the Spanish. With the exception of a copy of Erasmus’s Adagiorum (Basel 1551), the books are all in Italian, three printed at Florence, the others at Venice, the earliest book in 1522, the latest in 1554. The books most likely were obtained in Italy and taken to France for binding.
The bindings are generally brown goatskin, the covers decorated either with strapwork ornament (often enameled or silvered), or with gilt corner and centrepieces. Each has Paolo Giordano’s armorial gilt stamp, the shield divided per pale, showing on the viewer’s left the Orsini symbols of the rose and eel, and on the right the sei palle of the House of Medici, lettered around “Pavl Iordan Vrs D. Aragon.” Working partly from illustrations, Mirjam Foot assigned nine bindings to an unidentified Parisian atelier, designated “Wotton Binder C” on account of its work for the English bibliophile Thomas Wotton, and another binding, with hesitation, to a craftsman known as the Cupid’s Bow Binder. This Bible can be assigned to Wotton’s Binder C.
For another fine example of an Orsini binding by Wotton Binder C in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana, see Magnificent Books and Bindings, New York, 11 October 2023, lot 13 (La Biblia, Venice, 1547).
first italian edition, 8vo (168 x 100 mm). Roman type, 27 lines plus headline. collation: πA8 A-Z8 Aa-Qq8 Rr4: 324 leaves. Woodcut initial to A1r, ruled in red throughout. (Tissue repairs to closed tears at outer margins of H2 and H3, just touching text but without loss.)
binding: Parisian armorial binding (175 x 118 mm), c. 1556, by Wotton Binder C for Paolo Giordano Orsini, brown morocco , gold tooled and enamelled, outer narrow frame of double gilt fillets the interior of which is enamelled black, broad architectural scrollwork cartouche enameled in black in part and heightened with green and blue enamel, of which only traces remain, gilt scale pattern on scrolls at corners, central rectangular compartment containing a small oval armorial stamp of Orsini impaled with Medici encircled by PAVL IORDAN URS. D. ARAGON surrounded by open arabesque tools, in the interstices punches, floral arabesque tool, and small dots, traces of 2 pairs of alternating pink and yellow silk ties, spine with 5 bands, in the compartments 8-petaled gilt rosette enameled black, edges gilt and gauffered to an intricate arabesque design, housed in modern marbled slipcase. (Upper compartment of spine and corners repaired, slight worming to spine.)
provenance: Paolo Giordano Orsini, duca di Bracciano (1541-1585), with his gilt arms to covers, lettered “Pavl Iordan Vrs D. Aragon”—G. Cigerza of Rome (lent to Pitti Palace exhibition, 1922)—Libreria antiquaria T. De Marinis & C., Florence, his sale, Libreria antiquaria Ulrico Hoepli, Milan, part III, 17-19 June 1926, lot 265 (reproduced as plate XXV)—Jean Fürstenberg (1890-1982)—Martin Breslauer Inc., Catalogue 106 (New York, [c.1984]), item 45. acquisition: Purchased in 1988 from Martin Breslauer Inc., New York. references: USTC 833168; Edit16 CNCE 21169; Henry Davis Gift I (London, 1978), p. 153 (“Appendix V: Bindings by Wotton’s Binder III [Wotton binder C] for other collectors”, item 34); Tammaro de Marinis, Appunti e ricerche bibliografiche (Milan 1940), p. 130, no. 45 & pl. 245; for the binding and the books of Paolo Giordano Orsini, see Federico & Livio Macchi, “Le legature francesi di Paolo Giordano Orsini d’Aragona: Storia di un personaggio e di una legatura” in Misinta: Rivista di Bibliofilia e Cultura 23 (June 2016), pp. 143–49. exhibited: Mostra storica della legatura artistica in Palazzo Pitti (Florence 1922), no. 214; Exposition de reliures de la Renaissance: collection Jean Furstenberg: 30 September 1961 (Paris 1961), no. 52
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