ROSEO DA FABRIANO, Mambrino

by Mambrino Roseo Da Fabriano

£9,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

Superbly bound studied and portrayed in Hobson Culot, Italian and French C16 Bookbindings , n.11 (pp.36-37), from the library of Michel Wittock, a major C20 collector of fine bindings. The binding bears the trademark tools small ivy leaves, lotus tools and the apple-shaped centrepiece, here flanked by the owner s initials (e.g., de Marinis I, 2162 and 1707, and Henry Davis Gift II, 293-95) of the Venetian Apple Binder (so named by M. Foot), active c.1530-50s (Henry Davis Gift I, 309-15). He is also known as Fugger Binder (preferred by Hobson and Schunke), as most of the books in the bibliophile Johann Jakob Fugger s library came from his workshop; he also worked for Cardinal Granvelle and Thomas Mahieu. The same gilt initials AA flanking the apple tool are present on similar bindings gracing five other works (one unnoticed by Hobson Culot, now Folger 182-313q), all printed in Venice between 1527 and 1546. According to Hobson Culot, it is possible though this is pure guesswork that A A stands for Arnoldus Arlenius, of s Hertogenbosch, who in 1546 was employed in Venice as the librarian of the Spanish ambassador, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza . Mendoza, himself a renowned bibliophile, was employing a Venetian binder, Andrea di Lorenzo, who used very similar tools to the Apple Binder. This most influential and much reprinted mirror for princes was originally published in Castilian as Relox de Príncipes (Valladolid, 1529) by the Franciscan Antonio de Guevara (1481-1545). It first

• Binding: Hardcover

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