Plautus, comoediis XX, Venice, Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, July 1522, Venetian black morocco, ca. 1522, by Third Barbarigo Master

Plautus, Titus Maccius. Ex Plauti comoediis XX quarum carmina magna ex parte in mensum suum restituta sunt MDXXII. Index uerborum, quib. paulo abstrusiorib. Plautus utitur. Argumenta singularum comoediarum. Authoris uita. Tralatio [!] dictionum Graecarum. Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, July 1522

Another copy of the first Aldine edition. A Venetian binding commissioned by Andrea Cornaro (1511-1551) in the shop of the “Mendoza Binder” most probably in the early 1530s, before he reached the canonical age. Anthony Hobson identified two “almost identical” bindings lettered “And. Cornelivs” in a roundel on their lower covers, one covering a copy of the1515 Aldine Catullus (ex-J.R. Abbey collection, now UCLA 131), and the other a 1519 Aldine Cicero Orationes (ex-J.T. Gibson Craig, sale 1888 lot 265, now Stonyhurst College). The three volumes are not included in Hobson’s census of the Mendoza Binder’s production (Renaissance book collecting, 1999, pp. 244-250), but assigned to this shop in the notes he supplied to the editors of the UCLA Aldine catalogue (pp. 16, 121). 

4to (216 x 132 mm). Italic and Roman type, 39 lines plus headline. collation: *⁶ **⁸ a-z⁸ A-M⁸ N⁴: 298 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, *ii recto beginning with "rum." (A few stray stains, scattered foxing and browning, dampstaining to upper margin of a few leaves.)

binding: Venetian black morocco over pasteboards (225 x 140 mm), ca. 1522, by the Mendoza Binder, double frame of single gilt fillets flanked by multiple blind fillets, roundel with PLAVTVS in center of upper cover and AND. | CORNE | LIVS. in roundel on lower cover, traces of four pairs of ties, spine with raised bands in eight compartments, third and fourth gilt- lettered, others with repeat design in gilt, top stained black, edges speckled red. (Spine and corners restored with later gold tooling, upper joint weak but holding, front free endpaper nearly detached.)

provenance: Cardinal Andrea Cornaro (1511-1551), supralibros — Guglielmo Bruto Icilio Timoleone Libri, Count Libri- Carrucci (1803-1869) — Commandeur & Louis-Catherine Silvestre with Pierre Jannet, Catalogue de la bibliothèque de M. L****, Paris, 28 June-4 August 1847, lot 1775 — Jean Fürstenberg (1890-1982) — Martin Breslauer Inc., New York, Catalogue 104 (New York 1981), item 144 ($4,800) — John Saks (1913-1983), ex libris — Martin Breslauer Inc., New York 1984, Catalogue 107 (New York 1984), item 233A ($4,800) — Bloomsbury London, 30 June 1988, lot 13 — Alan G. Thomas, London, purchased in previous sale (£1,300); Catalogue 52 (London 1990), item 46 (£2,500). acquisition: Purchased from Alan G. Thomas, London, 1990. references: UCLA 211; Renouard 94/2; Edit16 37687; USTC 849863; for the binding, Musée d'art et d'histoire, Collection Jean Furstenberg: 3 mai-5 juin 1966 (Geneva 1966), no. 48; Tammaro De Marinis, Die italienischen Renaissance-Einbände der Bibliothek Fürstenberg (Hamburg 1966), pp. 128-129