Petrarca, Il Petrarca, Venice, Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Heirs of Andrea Torresano, June 1533, Bolognese tan goatskin, ca. 1545

Petrarca, Francesco. Il Petrarca. Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Heirs of Andrea Torresano, June 1533

A second copy of the fourth Aldine edition of Petrarch in near-contemporary Bolognese goatskin by the "Master of the Cabinetmakers' Guild Book" (renamed by Hobson the "Binder of Ulrich Fugger's Bible"). The tools of this binder and those of another, contemporaneous shop in Bologna—best known for works it bound for Nikolaus von Ebeleben and his friend and relative Damian Pflug— are so similar that Ilse Schunke posited that they were made by the same toolcutter (Die Einbände der Palatina in der Vatikanischer Bibliothek, Studi e testi, 216-218, Vatican City 1962, I, p. 172).

8vo (163 x 101 mm). Italic type, 29 lines plus headline. collation: a–z⁸ A–E⁸ F⁴: 228 foliated leaves (z8, B5, C5 blank). Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and C4v, two- and three-line initial spaces with guide letters. Occasional neat underscoring of text. (Some scattered soiling and staining.)

binding: Bolognese tan goatskin (166 x 112 mm), ca. 1545, by "Master of the Cabinetmakers' Guild Book" (renamed by Hobson the "Binder of Ulrich Fugger's Bible"), border frame of single gilt and multiple blind fillets, filled with solid arabesques and fleurons, central panel filled with large solid arabesque stamps, curving fillets, fleurons and stars, in center an oblong cartouche containing on the upper cover IL. | PETRARCHA., on lower cover the letters .C. .B. | .P. | .F. .I. | .S., spine in eight compartments with three full and four half bands, compartments with gilt knotwork tool, plain endpapers, edges gilt and gauffered to a knotwork design, traces of four pairs of ties. (Head and foot of spine restored.)

provenance: Unidentified owner(s), supralibros, initials C.B.P.F.I.S. on lower cover; verses of several sonnets underlined, those of sonnets 106 to 108 lined through in brown ink — unidentified owner, inscription "Di Ferrante del Monte ["e Borbone", added later]," evidently Ferrante Bourbon del Monte (1540–1589), marchese di Santa Maria, Nobile Romano e Patrizio di Perugia — unidentified owner, seventeenth-century inscription "Di Luduvic Pravi" — Lt. Col. Bryan Palmes (1851– 1932), bookplate; his sale, Sotheby's London, 25–26 July 1923, lot 100 (lots 90–113a designated as property of "Lt.-Col. Bryan Palmes, of Villa Mezzomonte, Capri, Italy"); purchased by — "Villars" (£17 10s) — Sotheby's London, 24–25 November 1924, lot 121 (offered among "Other Properties"); purchased by — Spiers (£13 10s) — Sotheby's London, 15–16 February 1926, lot 274 (again among "Other Properties"); purchased by — Ellis, London (£9 10s); Catalogue 241: A Catalogue of Fine Old Bookbindings (London, [1926]), item 153 — Jean Fürstenberg (1890–1982) — Martin Breslauer, Inc., New York; Catalogue 104/II: Fine books in Fine Bindings from the Fourteenth to the Present Century (New York, 1981), item 152 ($6,500). acquisition: Purchased from Martin Breslauer, Inc., New York, 1981. references: UCLA 261; Adams P802; Cataldi Palau 125; Edit16 27211; Renouard 108/5; USTC 847840; for the binding: Anthony Hobson, "Bookbinding in Bologna" in Schede umanistiche, n.s. 1 (1998), p. 171, no. 6; Hobson & Leonardo Quaquarelli, Legature bolognesi del rinascimento (Bologna, 1998), pp. 26–29, no. 6; Exposition de reliures de la Renaissance: Collection Jean Furstenberg 30September 1961 (Paris, 1961), no. 89; De Marinis, Die italienischen Renaissance-Einbände der Bibliothek Fürstenberg (Hamburg, 1966), pp. 108–109