Petrarca, Il Petrarcha con l'espositione d'Alessandro Vellutello, Venice, 1552, contemporary Roman olive morocco gilt, the Abbey copy

4to (217 x 151 mm). Roman and italic type. collation: *⁸ A-2D⁸: 224 leaves. Title-page with fine woodcut allegorical border, portrait of Laura and Petrarch, full-page map of Vaucluse, and 6 woodcuts to Del Triompho, woodcut printer's device to recto of final leaf, colophon dated 1550. (Upper and outer corners of ff.80-135 restored, not affecting text, some leaves with dampstaining at upper margin.)

binding: Contemporary Roman olive morocco gilt (226 x 158 mm), narrow roll-tooled gilt border of flower and leaf ornament flanked by gilt fillets, central panel divided by slanting lines into 2 lozenge-shaped compartments filled with curved octagonals, small fleurons and dots, in the other triangular compartments fleurons and orientalising cornerpieces, spine with 3 full and 4 half bands, spine compartments tooled in blind, traces of 4 pairs of fabric ties, edges gilt and gauffered to a knotwork and roundels pattern. (Spine ends and upper corners neatly repaired, extremities slightly rubbed, lacking ties, endleaves renewed.)

provenance: "Sylla Riccardo", sixteenth-century ownership inscription on verso of terminal blank—"Ex Libris Bibliotecae Monasterii Sancti Feirmini de Flaviniaco 1748", eighteenth-century inscription on verso of title-page, with shelfmarks and 1.5 pages of notes in the same hand to endleaves—"Rosselange" eighteenth-century inscription on verso of title-page—sold Sotheby's, 20 June 1960, lot 225 (binding described as Venetian), to Breslauer for Abbey—Major J.R. Abbey (1894-1969), with his accession note to endleaf, his sale, Sotheby's, 21 June 1967, lot 2085 (plate 130), £120 to Georges Heilbrun—Martin Breslauer Inc., Catalogue 110, item 42. acquisition: Purchased in 1992 from Martin Breslauer Inc., New York. references: USTC 847849; EDIT16 CNCE 27036; De Marinis, La Legatura Artistica in Italia nei Secoli XV & XVI, vol. I (Florence, 1960), no. 830 (plate 136), and no. 906 (plate 152)