Vergilius, Opera, Venice, Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, 1514 (but after 1517), later English paneled calf in eighteenth-century style

Vergilius Maro, Publius. Virgilius. Venice: Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, October 1514 (but after 1517)

This edition was printed after 1517, as the woodcut device was not in use until that date (the true 1514 edition has an earlier and different device). The colophon has a different setting (with the register omitting quire t, which is nevertheless present), and leaves E6-7, which contained the errata in the 1514 edition, are here blank. The 1514 edition cannot have been prepared with care, as the errata list ran to four pages; this later edition without such errata was therefore much improved.

8vo (160 x 90 mm). Italic type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: a-z⁸ A-E⁸: 224 leaves (E6-7 blank). Woodcut Aldine device (UCLA A6) on title-page and final verso. (Washed, whitewash over some annotations on a2–3 and t3–5, 8, scattered stains, short closed repair to g6.)

binding: Later English paneled calf in eighteenth-century style (167 x 99 mm), marbled endleaves, spine with two leather labels, five bands, original gilt and gauffered edges, green silk bookmark. (Extremities rubbed, a few wormholes to ends of spine, later endleaves.)

provenance: Unidentified owner(s), some marginal annotations (including a washed ink drawing of a church at end) — Paolo Bertarelli (priest, of Menaggio), inscription — Giacomo Antonio Grosso, a relative of Bertarelli, inscription (17^th century) — Paolo Antonio Grosso, inscription, dated 1718 — Sotheby's London, 5 December 2017, lot 189. acquisition: Purchased at Sotheby's via Halwas. references: UCLA 173 (not in collection; "Variants from 1514 ed. in register and colophon and without the four pages of errata at end"); cf. Renouard 68/8; Edit16 62186