Martelli, Le rime volgari, Venice, 1533, contemporary Roman brown morocco with "co'l tempo" impresa
Estimate
3,000 - 5,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
MARTELLI, LODOVICO. Le rime volgari. Rome: Antonio Blado d'Asola, 1533 [bound with:]
SANNAZARO, GIACOMO. Le Rime. Venice: Melchiorre I Sessa, 1532 [and:]
SANNAZARO, GIACOMO. Arcadia. Venice: Melchiorre I Sessa, 1532
THREE VOLUMES OF POETRY IN A CHARMING CONTEMPORARY BINDING, ONE OF FIVE EXTANT VOLUMES WITH A "CO'L TEMPO" IMPRESA.
This binding features an impresa with an astrolabe and the motto "co'l tempo" ("con il tempo"; "with time"). Anthony Hobson has located two other works with this impresa on the covers:
i) Caesar, Commentarii tradotti in volgar lingua, Venice: F. Bindoni and M. Pasini, 1531. E. P. Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings (London, 1928), pp. 243-4, pl. LVII.
ii) Herodotus, Delle guerre de Greci et de Per si, trans. M. M. Boiardo, Venice: G.A. dei Nicolini da Sabbio for Melchior Sessa, 1533. A Hobson, French and Italian collectors and their bindings (Roxburghe Club, 1953), p. 135, fig. 64.
These bindings were likely bound in Rome around 1535. A third additional volume is found in the present sale; see lot 1865 (Xenophon).
Hobson believes these were bound in the same workshop as a series of books for another Roman collector, whose impresa features a hound pursuing a bird (A. Hobson, "Some sixteenth-century buyers of books in Rome and elsewhere" in Humanistica Lovaniensia 34A (1985), pp.65-75 (pp.68-69)). One of these volumes is also in the present sale; see lot 1676 (Equicola).
3 works in one volume, 8vo (151 x 97 mm). (1) Italic type, 29 lines plus headline. collation: *4 A-I8 K4 L-X8 (K4r, Q1r and final verso blank): 168 leaves. 3-line verse in an early Italian hand on upper pastedown. (30 mm worm track to title affecting text on verso, slight worming to outer margin of first quire, marginal dampstaining.) (2) Italic type, 29 lines plus headline. collation: A-G8 (final verso blank): 56 leaves. Title in woodcut border. (Paper flaw to outer margin of F7.) (3) Italic type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: A-K8 (final verso blank): 80 leaves. Title in woodcut border, woodcut printer's device to final recto.
binding: Roman brown morocco (158 x 107 mm), c. 1535, frame of double gilt fillets, forming a small circle at outer angles and extending from midpoints of sides to form central circle containing an astrolabe wrapped by a banderol with the motto "CO'L TEMPO", spine with 3 full bands, authors' names and titles lettered in gilt up the spine, remains of manuscript shelfmark pasted to foot of spine, stubs from 4 pairs of ties, edges gilt. (Binding somewhat rubbed, spine ends defective, endleaves and pastedowns wormed, a few small wormholes to boards, 30 x 90 mm excision to upper endleaf, lacking ties.)
provenance: "Co'l Tempo" owner, impresa and motto on binding—ownership inscription excised from upper endleaf—heirs of Capt. John Desmond Grenville Fortescue (1919-2017), sale, Bonham's, London, 21 March 2018, lot 117. acquisition: Purchased at the preceding sale. references: (1) Edit16 CNCE 24027; USTC 841126; (2) Edit16 CNCE 29998; USTC 854661; (3) Edit16 CNCE 29997; USTC 854633
You May Also Like
