Pontano, Opera, Venice, Aldo Manuzio, 1505, brown morocco over thin wooden boards (Florence?)

Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano. Pontani Opera. Vrania, siue de stellis libri quinque. Meteororum liber unus. De hortis Hesperidum libri duo. Lepidina siue postorales [!] pompae septem. Item Meliseus, Maeon Acon. Hendecasyllaborum libri duo. Tumulorum liber unus. Neniae duodecim. Epigrammata duodecim. Quae uero in toto opere habeantur in indice, qui in calce est, licet uidere. Venice: Aldo Manuzio, August 1505

[Bound with:] Ioannis Iouiani Pontani Amorum libri II. De amore coniugali libri III. Tumulorum II, qui in superiore aliorum poematon editione desyderabantur. Lyrici I. Eridanorum II. Eclogae duae Coryle, et quinquennius superioribus quatuor additae. Calpurnij Siculi Eclogae VII. Aurelij Nemesiani Eclogae IIII. Explicatio locorum omnium abstrusorum Pontani authore Petro Summontio uiro doctissimo. Index rerum, quae in his Pontani lusibus contineantur. Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, February 1518

The Aldine edition of Pontanus's poetical works; only Aldine edition of the the second volume. Vol. I belongs to the first edition of 1505 (with the exception of the first gathering, which belongs to the 1513 edition, and demonstrates the Aldine press habit of utilizing leftover sheets when gathering copies of a new edition). The poems were amended from the princeps issued in Naples in 1505, establishing the text up to modern critical editions. Giovanni Pontano (1426-1503) was one of the most illustrious figures of the Neapolitan Renaissance. At age twenty-two, he joined the court of Alfonso the Magnanimous and acted as political advisor for the Aragonese family until 1495. In Naples, he set up an influential academy, Accademia Pontoniana, which is still in existence today. He was a distinguished Latin writer, famous for his vigorous, inventive and yet very neat style, and his prose treatises enjoyed a wide circulation, though he was best known as a Latin poet. This second volume comprises his most original compositions in elegiac and hendecasyllabic verse.

8vo (162 x 100 mm). Opera: Italic and Roman type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: a-z⁸ aa-ff⁸ gg¹⁰ (first signature from 1513 edition): 242 leaves. libri II: Italic and Roman type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: a-x⁸ y⁴ (s8 and x5 blanks): 172 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-pages and final versos, woodcut initials, early marginalia. (Occasional foxing and browning, worming to last 100 leaves or so, a few stray stains.)

binding: Brown morocco over thin wooden boards (166 x 110 mm), possibly Florence, 1520s, blind tooled, border of acanthus leaves, central panel with vertical row of 5 lozenge-shaped tools containing four Cs addorsed enclosing a daisy, traces of two clasps, spine with raised bands in four compartments, each diapered in blind, fore-edge with manuscript title. (Some rubbing to extremities, joints starting.)

provenance: Purchase inscription "Emptus g(ulden?)3 B(atzen?)4" under colophon of Vol. II — inscription "u.t.a. Fra. (?)" dated 22 January 1724 — Martin Breslauer Inc., Catalogue 110 (New York 1992), item 20. acquisition: Purchased from Martin Breslauer Inc., New York, 1993. references: (Opera) UCLA 91; Renouard 49/4; Edit16 36164; USTC 850308; (libri II) UCLA 165; Renouard 85/10; Edit16 37595; USTC 850310