ERASMUS
Parabolae sive similia.
Paris, Apud Simone[m] Colinaeu[m], 1523.£7,500.00
8vo. ll. 103. Roman letter, margins ruled in red. T-p within architectural woodcut border, white on black, as the woodcut initials. Contemp. 3-line Latin inscription to head of t-p defining parabola, contemp. inscription of the Jesuit College, Paris, early autograph visible but erased, C18 or C19 autograph of N. Deniau. Occasional contemp. marginalia including manicules. A very good copy in mid-C16 French (Paris?) gold-tooled calf with geometrical design, interlaces in pale and dark blue, green and red, edges gilt, chipped at head of spine, upper joint cracked, rubbed.
Very rare edition of Erasmus’s collection of instructive aphorisms, first published 1514, excerpted from Plutarch’s Moralia, Seneca, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder and Theophrastus, ranging from commentary on human behaviour and philosophy to observations of natural-historical phenomena. At the end is a glossary of difficult terms, mostly Greek.
This is a rare and attractive example of a mid-C16th French mosaiqué binding with painted interlaces, a style prominent in Paris from the 1550s. There are examples of Parisian bindings of this period with geometric designs that were produced more cheaply using single metal stamps, but ours was clearly tooled by hand. Bindings with similar designs were produced in Parisian workshops for Thomas Wotton, the ‘English Grolier’ (Henry Davis Gift III, 36-50), though usually painted in black, and in Italy, where there are many examples of bindings with a similar palette to ours (De Marinis, I, 844 (pl. B2)).
Extremely scarce outside Continental European libraries: OCLC notes only Toronto in North America.
Not in Schreiber. Vander Haegen p. 138. De Reuck 281. Renouard, Colines, pp. 49-50. Allen II. 312. Adams E 721. Not in BM STC Fr.
