Tacitus, Opera, Venice, Paolo Manuzio & Heirs of Andrea Torresano, 1534, French polychrome binding, ca. 1560

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius. Cornelius Tacitus exacta cura recognitus, et emendatus. Copiosus index rerum, locorum, et personarum, de quibus in his libris agitur. Varia lectio, in calce operis impressa. Venice: Paolo Manuzio & Heirs of Andrea Torresano, November 1534

A fine paper copy of the sole Aldine edition of Tacitus, in an elaborate French gilt and polychrome binding. The Aldine Tacitus reprints the text established by Beatus Rhenanus and first published the previous year by Froben in Basel.

4to (216 x 135 mm). Italic type, 40 lines plus headline. collation: *⁸ **⁴ a–h⁸ i⁴ k⁸ L–M⁸ n–z⁸ A–K⁸: 272 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and K8v, seven-line initial spaces with guide letters.

binding: French polychrome binding (222 x 144 mm), ca. 1560, tan calf, tooled to a foliate arabesque design, outlined in gold and painted green and black, within a border of strapwork in an architectural scroll pattern painted green and white, many of the resulting compartments filled by a semé of gilt dots, traces of two pairs of ties, spine in six compartments, each with a single gilt fleuron, gilt edges. (Recased with exceptionally fine restoration to spine and corners, joints a bit rubbed.)

provenance: Unidentified owner, late eighteenth-century inscription "Quis ut Deus Fran. Joseph. Admiratus (Demiratus?) Rien (? Paris/-anon. (?)" on title-page (washed or faded but visible under ultraviolet) — George John Warren, 5^th Baron Vernon (1803–1866), his note describing the copy pasted to front free endpaper; A Catalogue of the Library at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire (ca. 1836–1840?) [Vernon's manuscript catalogue, in Grolier Club Library; not foliated, no item numbers; entry (in pencil) reads "inlaid morocco" — Robert Stayner Holford (1808–1892) — Lt. Col. Sir George Lindsay Holford (1860– 1926); Sotheby's London, London, 5–9 December 1927, lot 780 (the Sotheby's catalogue notes that the Tacitus was "Shown at the Exhibition of Bookbindings held by the First Edition Club in 1926"); purchased by — Baron Joseph Raphaël Vitta (1860—1942) (£160) — Raphaël Esmerian (1903–1976), bookplate; Antoine & Étienne Ader, Jean-Louis Picard, Jacques Tajan & Claude Guérin with Georges Blaizot, Bibliothèque Raphaël Esmerian. Première Partie, 6 June 1972, lot 111; purchased by — Édouard Loewy, Paris (FF 13,000). acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Pinault, Paris, 1987. references: UCLA 275; Adams T25; Cataldi Palau 138; Edit16 27227; Renouard 112/8; USTC 857890; for the binding: Dorothy Miner, The History of Bookbinding 525–1950 AD, catalogue of an exhibition in cooperation with the Baltimore Museum of Art, 12 November 1957– 12 January 1958 (Baltimore. 1957), no. 284; Grolier Club, Bookbinding Styles During the Renaissance in France from the Collection of Raphael Esmerian (New York, 1966), no. 32