Quintilianus, Institutionum oratoriarum, Venice, Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, 1521 (but 1522), Venetian russet goatskinby the Mendoza Binder dated 1537

Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius. M. Fabii Quintiliani Institutionum oratoriarum libri XII diligentius recogniti MDXXII. Index capitum totius operis. Conuersio dictionum Graecarum, quas ipse author in Latinum non transtulit. Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, January 1521 (but 1522)

This influential textbook on the theory and practice of rhetoric and oration is the only work of the Roman teacher and rhetorician Quintilian (b. ca. 35 AD) that has survived.

In a "Notabilia" blog post, Robin Halwas discussed the first owner of this volume: "Philipp von Maugis is a recent addition to a growing list of German students identified as patrons of bookbinding in Italy. Philipp had travelled from Vienna to Padua in 1536 to study law, and the following year presented to an anonymous binder in Venice ten books, mostly legal and humanistic texts, published north of the Alps in the years 1521–1537. … The books were gathered in three volumes, and bound uniformly in russet goatskin, their covers decorated by a rectangular frame formed by a single gilt and multiple blind fillets, with a gilt rosette placed at the outer angles, and a gilt ivy leaf at the inner corners. On the upper covers, the binder lettered a title, Philipp’s name, and the date 1537.

"This decorative scheme had been established by the 'Mendoza Binder,' a craftsman working in Venice from about 1520–1550, for the active collector Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, Spanish ambassador to Venice from 1539–1547, among other customers. From archival documents in the Escorial, Anthony Hobson tentatively identified him as Andrea di Lorenzo, whose shop, situated in the parish of San Fantin, maintained a loose association with the retail shop of the Aldine press in the Merceria. Hobson designated books bound to this pattern as the 'simple style' of the Mendoza Binder’s 'trade bindings,' and listed about forty [in Renaissance Book Collecting: Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, their Books and Bindings (Cambridge, 1999)]. Most have no owner’s name on the upper cover. … Hobson believed that from the mid-1530s onwards, the Mendoza Binder was wholly occupied with commissions from major collectors, such as Hurtado de Mendoza and Johann Jakob Fugger, and ceased to produce such 'trade bindings' for the book-buying public" (https://www.robinhalwas.com/n42-philipp-von-maugis-).

4to (214 x 131 mm). Italic type, 39 lines plus headline. collation: *⁴ a–z⁸ A–E⁸ F⁶: 234 foliated leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and F6v, three- and six-line initial spaces with guide letters. (Some scattered, chiefly marginal staining, single wormhole becoming a very short trail in lower margin o7 to end, never near text.)

binding: Venetian russet goatskin by the Mendoza Binder (220 x 142 mm) dated 1537, covers with border of multiple blind fillets, gilt rosette at corners, frame formed of single gilt fillet flanked three blind fillets on either side, gilt ivy-leaf-tool at inner corners, inside frame of front cover lettered in gold at top M.F. QVINTI | LIANVS. and at bottom PHILIPPUS·A· MVG | IS·M.D.XXXVII., traces of two pairs of green silk ties, spine in eight compartments with three full and four false bands, full bands highlighted by blind-fillet darts extending to covers, top two compartments lettered in silver paint "M.F. Qu | tilian[us]," plain endpapers, blued edges. (A bit scuffed, spine faded, a few tiny, unobtrusive wormholes.)

provenance: Philippus a Maugis, supralibros, name and date on front cover, some underlining in red ink and sixteenth- century marginalia in red and brown ink in first few quires, probably in Philippus a Maugis’s hand — Convent of Canons Regular of St Augustine, Herzogenburg, eighteenth-century(?) inscription "Bibliothecae Ducumburgensis" on upper pastedown. acquisition: Purchased from Mayfair Rare Books (Paolo Rambaldi), London, via Halwas, 2014. references: UCLA 208; Adams Q56; Cataldi Palau 61; Edit16 54149; Renouard 93/14; USTC 851768