SANNAZZARO, Jacopo.
FRENCH SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MOROCCO BINDING FROM THE LIBRARY OF ANDREW FLETCHER OF SALTOUN
Opera omnia Latine scripta, nuper edita.
Venice, In aedibus haeredum Aldi Manutii, et Andreae Asulani Soceri, 1535£17,500.00
FIRST EDITION thus. 8vo. ll. (i) 40, 63 (i). Italic letter. Divisional t-p. Woodcut printer’s device to first t-p and final verso. Autograph of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun to rear pastedown, modern bookplate to ffep. An excellent, well margined copy in mid-sixteenth-century brown morocco, gilt, a French design of large arabesque cornerpieces around central openwork arabesque, blank lozenge at centre, square at corners, fleur-de-lys at head and foot and fans at right and left, on a semis of small quatrefoils, within outer border of fillets, spine gilt in compartments with quatrefoils of two different sizes, raised bands with hatching and single fillets, board edges with fillets and hatching, turn-ins filleted in blind, edges gilt, upper and lower boards each with one small scuff to border removing gilding, light offsetting to pastedowns, endpapers lightly foxed, but in exceptional condition. Intriguing eng. Bookplate ‘AK’ c. 1900 to fly.
Fourth and ‘best’ Aldine edition of the Latin works of the Neapolitan poet Jacopo Sannazaro (1458-1530), published posthumously by the Aldine Press and containing new material, in a beautiful French-style binding of the mid-sixteenth century and from the library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, Scottish patriot, adventurer and politician. = This edition is the first to be dedicated entirely to Sannazaro and issued under the title ‘opera omnia,’ gave the first appearance of many of his epigrams (only some of which had appeared in the previous edition), to which the divisional title refers: ‘nuper emissi.’ Renouard described our edition as being better organised and more complete than previous Aldine editions of Sannazaro’s Latin verse; the elegies have indeed been reorganised and the epigrams are properly set out with individual titles, unlike in earlier editions.
The first work included is Sannazaro’s De partu Virginis, i.e. On the Virgin Birth, a retelling in three books of the Annunciation in classical epic style (Sannazaro borrowed heavily from Virgil), notable for its simile describing the Virgin Mary as being like a young girl by the sea who, seeing an approaching ship, fears that it might portend the arrival of pirates; some contemporaries were upset by the suggestion that the Virgin was excessively fearful at the time of the Annunciation. Also contained here are some of Sannazaro’s eclogues, the pastoral Salices (‘Willows’), some of his elegies and the newly published epigrams, as well as fragments and shorter poems.
The binding was most likely produced in France but is not dissimilar to the close imitations of French work made in English workshops c. 1560-70, such as the morocco bindings produced for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Archbishop Matthew Parker, as well as the work of the so-called Morocco Binder, to which our example bears the greatest similarity. ‘An English binding in morocco earlier than 1600 is extremely uncommon, but there was at least one London shop using this leather in the sixties and seventies of the sixteenth century … A study of the small tools used on these bindings makes it clear that they do not all come from the same shop’ (Howard Nixon, ‘A Binding by the Morocco Binder’ in The Book Collector, 6.3 (Autumn 1957), p. 278). Fletcher could have purchased this book in England or France, having spent time in both countries; he used his travels as an opportunity to buy books, particularly in France, ‘combining with the dealer James Fall to scour the back streets of Paris in the search for second-hand bargains’ (ODNB).
Ren. 114: 3: ‘Cette édition est mieux ordonnée et plus complète que les précédentes.’
USTC 854667. EDIT 16 CNCE 27239. Adams S 313. Ahmanson-Murphy 279. Kallendorf & Wells 255.