Seneca, Tragoediae, Venice, Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, 1517, contemporary Roman brown morocco, probably by Cardinals' Shop

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Scenecae [!] Tragoediae. Venice: Heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, October 1517

"The only Aldine edition of the ten tragedies of Seneca the Younger, including the Octavia, wrongly attributed to him. The editor Girolamo Avanzi, about whom very little is known, claims in the preface to have corrected 'three thousand errors' from previous printings. Seneca's tragedies exerted a heavy influence on the Elizabethan theater in particular.

"This is the first issue of this edition, with Seneca's name embarrassingly misspelled on the titlepage" (Grolier/Aldus).

While this binding not listed in the literature on the Cardinals’ Shop—first identified and named by Anthony Hobson in "Two Early Sixteenth-Century Binder's Shops in Rome," in De libris compactis miscellanea, ed. G. Colin (Aubel-Brussels, 1984), pp. 79–98—its tooling and design make the attribution nearly certain.

8vo (160 x 94 mm). Italic type, 30 Lines plus headline. collation: a⁴ b–z⁸ A–D⁸ E⁴: 216 foliated leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and E4v, two- to seven-line initial space with guide letters. Dramatis personae of Hercules added in an early hand to a4v (letterpress dramatis personae precede the other plays). (Title-page a trifle soiled.)

binding: Contemporary Roman brown morocco (165 x 103 mm), probably by the Cardinals' Shop, covers panelled and gold tooled (oxidized), outer frame of two gilt fillets flanked by two blind fillets, floral corner tools, central rectangle with exedrae containing leaf, flame at outer corners and flower at inner corners, central gilt arabesque, at top of upper cover [fleuron] IO [fleuron] F [two fleurons] TOR [fleuron], spine in four compartments with gilt title running up spine, plain endpapers, blue edges speckled with red. (Very worn, especially spine, rear cover detached.) Half brown morocco folding-case.

provenance: Roman bookseller's mark (?) "2 . 30" under Aldine device — unidentified owner, supralibros, lettered "IO. F. TOR" with flerurons [not in De Marinis] — Lucien Gougy (1863–1931), see Goldschmidt description below — Internationaal Antiquariaat Menno Hertzberger, Catalogue 260 (Baarn, [1970]), item 100 (DFL 1300; $335) — E. P. Goldschmidt & Co., London; Catalogue 160 (London, 1980), item 214 ($925; "on the front cover, in the upper left corner between the frame and the border, is the small stamp of Gougy"). acquisition: Purchased from Lathrop C. Harper, Inc., New York, 1980. references: UCLA 155; Adams S903; Cataldi Palau 24; Edit16 37581; Grolier/Aldus 65; Renouard 80/4; USTC 855885