Details
JACOBUS PHILIPPUS DE BERGAMO (1434-1520). Supplementum Chronicarum. Venice: Bernardinus Benalius, 15 December 1486.
Super-chancery 2° (303 x 209 mm). Collation: a8 b4 c-l8 m6 n-p8 A-V8 (a1r blank, a1v table, b4r prologue, Ad magistratum Bergomensem, c1r text, V8r colophon). 274 leaves, c1-V8 foliated (with errors) 3-295. 59 lines plus headline, shoulder notes. Types 1:83(80)G (text), 2:150GA (headings). A few initial spaces with guide letters, white-on-black floriated woodcut initials. Woodcuts: large cut of the Creation of Eve on a1r, two half-page woodcuts, on c2v and c3r, of the expulsion from Paradise and Cain slaying Abel, and 72 small woodcuts of town views, various sizes, including repeats. (A few bifolia rehinged, first leaf with foremargin repaired just catching text on verso, closed tear to O5, approximately 5 small marginal tears or repairs, some marginal soiling, a few minor marginal stains.) Early 19th-century half vellum and pastepaper boards (a few tiny wormholes); modern cloth folding case.
Provenance: AGNOLO BRONZINO (1503-72), court artist to Cosimo I de' Medici, manuscript ex-libris on first leaf of text; early marginalia (some cropped); deleted 17th-century inscription on a2r; "Libreria di Omnissanti"(?), 19th-century oval medallion inkstamp on dedication leaf; Giuseppe Martini, collation note in pencil on first flyleaf.
FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION, third edition. Bernardino Benalio, the printer of the 1483 first edition of Jacobus de Bergamo's popular world chronicle, borrowed most of the illustrations for this edition from Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum. The smaller town views are for the most part close copies of the blocks used for the first Venetian edition of the Fasciculus (Georg Walch, 1479) and copied by Ratdolt for later editions; they include the famous woodcut of Venice, copied in reverse from the Rolewinck blocks. Original to this edition is the larger woodcut of Genoa, on f. 50, used again for Rome on f. 79, and cited by Hind as one of the earliest views of that city. The three large Biblical cuts are derived from the illustrations of Heinrich Quentell's influential Low German Bible (ca. 1478); Hind notes their stylistic resemblance to the work of Hieronymus de Sanctis, described by Essling as "one of the most gifted artists working in Venice at the end of the fifteenth century" (Essling 260).
AN IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY, owned by the Florentine painter Agnolo Bronzino, pupil of Jacopo Pontormo and court painter from 1539 to 1560 under Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, for whom he painted several portraits of the Medici family. Bronzino, who by the 1540s had become the leading exponent of portrait painting in Florence, was himself a member of the Florentine intellectual élite: a poet and the author of numerous sonnets, songs and burlesque rhymes (see lot 27), he was a founding member of the Accademia degli Umidi (later Fiorentina). We are grateful to Professor Janet Cox-Rearick for sharing her expertise on Bronzino.
Two of the notes in the book relate to Savonarola, who is described in a hostile tone as a "prodigium inauditum". The note on the last leaf, which misdates Savonarola's death to 1478 (instead of 1498), accuses the Dominican of simulating holiness, of wishing to be venerated as a saint not only by the Florentine people but also by other nations, and of preaching unheard-of things in an unaccustomed manner.
HC *2807; BMC V, 371 (IB. 22312); CIBN J-142; IDL 2610; IGI 5077; Polain (B) 1494; Dyson Perrins; Essling 342; Hind II, 456-57; Sander 916; Goff J-210.
Super-chancery 2° (303 x 209 mm). Collation: a8 b4 c-l8 m6 n-p8 A-V8 (a1r blank, a1v table, b4r prologue, Ad magistratum Bergomensem, c1r text, V8r colophon). 274 leaves, c1-V8 foliated (with errors) 3-295. 59 lines plus headline, shoulder notes. Types 1:83(80)G (text), 2:150GA (headings). A few initial spaces with guide letters, white-on-black floriated woodcut initials. Woodcuts: large cut of the Creation of Eve on a1r, two half-page woodcuts, on c2v and c3r, of the expulsion from Paradise and Cain slaying Abel, and 72 small woodcuts of town views, various sizes, including repeats. (A few bifolia rehinged, first leaf with foremargin repaired just catching text on verso, closed tear to O5, approximately 5 small marginal tears or repairs, some marginal soiling, a few minor marginal stains.) Early 19th-century half vellum and pastepaper boards (a few tiny wormholes); modern cloth folding case.
Provenance: AGNOLO BRONZINO (1503-72), court artist to Cosimo I de' Medici, manuscript ex-libris on first leaf of text; early marginalia (some cropped); deleted 17th-century inscription on a2r; "Libreria di Omnissanti"(?), 19th-century oval medallion inkstamp on dedication leaf; Giuseppe Martini, collation note in pencil on first flyleaf.
FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION, third edition. Bernardino Benalio, the printer of the 1483 first edition of Jacobus de Bergamo's popular world chronicle, borrowed most of the illustrations for this edition from Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum. The smaller town views are for the most part close copies of the blocks used for the first Venetian edition of the Fasciculus (Georg Walch, 1479) and copied by Ratdolt for later editions; they include the famous woodcut of Venice, copied in reverse from the Rolewinck blocks. Original to this edition is the larger woodcut of Genoa, on f. 50, used again for Rome on f. 79, and cited by Hind as one of the earliest views of that city. The three large Biblical cuts are derived from the illustrations of Heinrich Quentell's influential Low German Bible (ca. 1478); Hind notes their stylistic resemblance to the work of Hieronymus de Sanctis, described by Essling as "one of the most gifted artists working in Venice at the end of the fifteenth century" (Essling 260).
AN IMPORTANT ASSOCIATION COPY, owned by the Florentine painter Agnolo Bronzino, pupil of Jacopo Pontormo and court painter from 1539 to 1560 under Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, for whom he painted several portraits of the Medici family. Bronzino, who by the 1540s had become the leading exponent of portrait painting in Florence, was himself a member of the Florentine intellectual élite: a poet and the author of numerous sonnets, songs and burlesque rhymes (see lot 27), he was a founding member of the Accademia degli Umidi (later Fiorentina). We are grateful to Professor Janet Cox-Rearick for sharing her expertise on Bronzino.
Two of the notes in the book relate to Savonarola, who is described in a hostile tone as a "prodigium inauditum". The note on the last leaf, which misdates Savonarola's death to 1478 (instead of 1498), accuses the Dominican of simulating holiness, of wishing to be venerated as a saint not only by the Florentine people but also by other nations, and of preaching unheard-of things in an unaccustomed manner.
HC *2807; BMC V, 371 (IB. 22312); CIBN J-142; IDL 2610; IGI 5077; Polain (B) 1494; Dyson Perrins; Essling 342; Hind II, 456-57; Sander 916; Goff J-210.