Details
BOCCACCIO, Giovanni (1313-1373). Il Decamerone. Florence: heirs of Filippo Giunta, 14 April 1527.
4° (202 x 136mm). Italic type. With blank AA8, a MS preface addressed to Francesco de'Bardi by Boccaccio written in a 16th-century hand bound in, initial spaces with guide-letters, printer's device on title and final verso. 19th-century English blue morocco elaborately gilt, with onlays in citron, red, green and tan morocco, spine similarly gilt and on-laid with red and olive labels, gilt turn-ins, pink silk liners, gilt edges, 18th-century French slipcase of blue morocco gilt lined with pink silk. Provenance: Sir George Holford; J.R. Abbey (booklabel, sale Sotheby's, 19 June 1967 lot 1700).
This elaborate binding commissioned by Holford is a remarkably exact copy of one covering Bandello, Canti XI (Agen, 1545) which was bound by J.A. Derôme, and which was also in the Holford collection; the Derôme binding is reproduced in Hobson's Thirty Bindings, plate XXVIII. Hobson's remark that the binder "was a craftsman of incomparable skill" applies equally to this imitation. It is possibly the work of Francis Bedford (1800-84), who worked with great skill in the style of others. THE RARE 1527 GIUNTA EDITION established the text of the Decameron until Manelli's edition of 1761. It became a symbol of the Florentine republic since, according to Ugo Foscolo in his Discorso sul Decamerone, almost all the men who worked on it died fighting against the Medici. A counterfeit edition was published at Venice in 1729. Gamba 172: "Rarissimo".
4° (202 x 136mm). Italic type. With blank AA8, a MS preface addressed to Francesco de'Bardi by Boccaccio written in a 16th-century hand bound in, initial spaces with guide-letters, printer's device on title and final verso. 19th-century English blue morocco elaborately gilt, with onlays in citron, red, green and tan morocco, spine similarly gilt and on-laid with red and olive labels, gilt turn-ins, pink silk liners, gilt edges, 18th-century French slipcase of blue morocco gilt lined with pink silk. Provenance: Sir George Holford; J.R. Abbey (booklabel, sale Sotheby's, 19 June 1967 lot 1700).
This elaborate binding commissioned by Holford is a remarkably exact copy of one covering Bandello, Canti XI (Agen, 1545) which was bound by J.A. Derôme, and which was also in the Holford collection; the Derôme binding is reproduced in Hobson's Thirty Bindings, plate XXVIII. Hobson's remark that the binder "was a craftsman of incomparable skill" applies equally to this imitation. It is possibly the work of Francis Bedford (1800-84), who worked with great skill in the style of others. THE RARE 1527 GIUNTA EDITION established the text of the Decameron until Manelli's edition of 1761. It became a symbol of the Florentine republic since, according to Ugo Foscolo in his Discorso sul Decamerone, almost all the men who worked on it died fighting against the Medici. A counterfeit edition was published at Venice in 1729. Gamba 172: "Rarissimo".