GIOVIO, Paolo; DOMENICHI, Ludovico.

by Paolo; DOMENICHI, Ludovico Giovio

£4,950 · Offered by Sokol Books

The charming contemporary binding, produced in a skilled provincial workshop most probably in Tuscany, displays the influence of 1540s-early 1550s Roman bookbinding. The models for the curl tools and the geometrical knot on the inner border are found on bindings produced for the great bibliophiles Giovanni Battista Grimaldi (cf. de Marinis I, 739, 751) and Antonio Filareto (cf. de Marinis I, 857). In the second half of the C16, the ‘pilgrim’ watermark, on the eps here, appears most frequently in north-western Italy, but also Pisa and Sicily (cf. Briquet). A very good copy of the second edition in Italian of Paolo Giovio’s famous biography of the Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba (1453-1515), considered the first to make gunpowder weapons an integral part of warfare. Written in Latin c.1525 and published by the historian Giovio (1483-1552) in 1549, it was translated into Italian by Ludovico Domenichi in 1550. Known as ‘El Gran Capitán’, Fernández de Córdoba was a key figure in the Conquest of Granada (1481-91) and the Italian Wars (1494-1505). ‘The ambassador of Charles V to Rome, Luis Fernández de Córdoba, duke of Sessa, commissioned Giovio to vindicate the reputation of his father-in-law, Gonzalo, the most brilliant general of the age. After winning the kingdom of Naples from the French, the “great captain” had been forced into retirement in Spain by the jealousy of Ferdinand of Aragon, who suspected him of wanting the crown of Naples for himself, and the duke of

• Binding: Hardcover

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