BURLEY, Walter.

by Walter Burley

£85,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

Rare and substantial Aristotelian codex, with the commentary of an important English fourteenth-century philosopher and pre-eminent Aristotelian editor, and noble Italian provenance. Provenance: Written by a scribe who names himself in the colophon on fol. 300r as “ego andreas scripsi”, and apparently also on fol. 66v as “A.B.” in large red letters there. He states he completed the work on the 24 February 1435 (although the last numeral descends so far below the line that it might just be read as a ‘9’), in Venice. Early, possibly contemporary ex libris of Petri ex Captaneis on verso of last. Conte Pirro de Capitani (d. c. 1669; also Pyrro de Capitaneis), Milanese nobleman, general and sometime ambassador to the imperial court in Vienna: inscriptions in late seventeenth-century Italian hand listing its contents and its donation, presumably to the Capuchin Friars of Monza in Milan, who are recorded as receiving a magnificent gift of books from him (see Philippi Argelati Bononiensis Bibliotheca scriptorum Mediolanensium, 1745, col. 684). Ercole Giuseppe de Silva (1756-1840, conte di Biandrate), and from his vast family library in Cinisello Balsamo, Milan (which borders Monza): his oval ex libris stamp and in his binding. In the catalogue of his collection: Catalogo de’ libri della biblioteca Silva in Cinisello, Monza, 1811, under ‘Nota de’ Codici manoscritti’, no. 43 (corresponding to “MS / 43” in gilt at foot of spine); his sale with Potier in Paris: Catalogue de livres rares

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.