Early Printing & Manuscripts / Art History & Literature

PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS, Caius. Epistolarum libri X. ad exemplar manuscriptum Rodol. Agricolae diligentiss. recogniti ...
Including: (2) SUETONIUS TRANQUILLIUS. De viris illustribus liber.
(3) OBSEQUENS, Julius. Ab anno urbis conditae quingentesimoquinto, prodigiorum liber imperfectus.
(4) CATANAEUS, Johannes Maria. C. Plinii Caecilii secundi Vita.
Antwerp, Antonius Dumaeus [= Anthonis van der Haeghen], 1542.
8vo. With several decorated woodcut initials. Contemporary blind tooled pigskin, sewn on 3 supports with the corresponding raised bands on the spine, both boards tooled in a panel design with floral motives in the 2 central panels, surrounded by a border with portraits on the front, and passion scenes and saints on the back, the manuscript initials "E.K" on the front, remnants of white leather closing ties. "494" [=496], [39], [1 blank] pp. Full description

PLUTARCHUS. Moralia, quae usurpantur. sunt autem omnis elegantis doctrinae penus: id est, varij libri: morales, historici, physici, mathematici, deniq; ad politiorem litteraturam pertinentes & humanitatem: omnes de Graeca in Latinam linguam transscripti.
Basel, Thomas Guarini, 1570. Folio. With woodcut printer's device on title-page and repeated on last page, some mathematical woodcuts in text and numerous historiated woodcut initials. Early 17th-century Jesuit prize binding in richly gold-tooled light brown calf, sides with arabesques in the style of Gascon, richly gold-tooled double borders and inner panel with small bands in a geometrical pattern. [12], 857, [91] pp. Full description

POLIZIANO, Angelo. Omnia opera Angeli Politiani, et alia quaedam lectu digna, quorum nomina in sequenti indice vedere licet.
Venice, Aldus Manutius, 1498. Folio. Early 18th-century (?) polished calf, spine richly gilt in compartments with red morocco title label, both sides with triple gilt fillets along the edges and large gilt oval coat-of-arms in the centre, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers. The coat of arms is of Henri-Louis Loménie, comte de Brienne (1658-1743), son of Louis Henry Loménie de Brienne. [452] ll. Full description

PRUDENTIUS CLEMENS, Aurelius; Johannes SICHARD and Elio Antonio de NEBRIJA (editors). Opera multo quam antea castigatiora, praeterea et Aelij Antonij Nebrissensis commentarijs haud poenitendis illustrata, quibus insuper adglutinata sunt scholia Joannis Sichardi, quae omnia nunc primum in philomusorum gratiam excusa sunt ...
Antwerp, Merten de Keyser, 1536 (preface dated march 1537). 8vo (14.9 x 9.5 cm). With some woodcut decorated initials throughout. Later overlapping vellum. [16], 563 [=576] pp. Full description

PRUDENTIUS CLEMENS, Aurelius, and Theodorus PULMANNUS (editor). Theodori Pulmanni Cranenburgii, et Victoris Giselini opera, ex fide decem librorum manuscriptorum, emendatus, et in eum, eiusdem Victoris Giselini commentarius.
Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, November 1564.
With:
(2) GISELINUS Victor. In Aurelii Prudentii Clementis v. cl. opera commentarius.
Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1564. 2 parts in 1 volume. 8vo (15.7 x 10.2 cm). With Plantins woodcut device on the title page of both works, ad 1 with a woodcut decorated initial. 19th-century calf. 350, [2]; [168] pp. Full description

QUINTILIANUS, Marcus Fabius. [De institutione oratoria].
(Colophon: Florence, Filippo I Giunta, October 1515). Small 8vo (14.5 x 10 cm). With a title-page containing only the author's name, but with the title in the heading to liber I, and Giunti's woodcut device on the verso of the otherwise blank final leaf. Set entirely in an Aldine-style italic (with upright capitals). Vellum (ca. 1850?). [4], "269" [= 367], [1] ll. Full description

QUINTILIANUS, Marcus Fabius. [Institutiones oratoriae].
(Colophon: Venice, "aedibus Aldi et Andreae soceri" [= Aldus Manutius & Andre Torresani d'Asola], August 1514). 4to. With Aldus's famous woodcut anchor device on the title-page, repeated on the back of the last text page. Gold-tooled red morocco (ca. 1700), rebacked and given a black morocco spine label in the 19th century. [4], 230 ll. Full description

QUINTILIANUS, Marcus Fabius. Institutionum oratorium libri XII diligentius recogniti M D XXII. Index capitum totius operis. Conversio dictionum Graecarum, quas ipse author in latinum non transtulit.
(Colophon: Venice "In Aedibus Aldi, et Andreae soceri" [= André d'Asola & sons], January 1521 [= 1522]). Narrow 4to in 8s (21 x 13 cm). With Aldus's anchor and dolphin publisher's device on the first and last pages. Set entirely in a single size of Aldine italic, with some headings, running heads, etc., set in its (upright) capitals. Gold-tooled red morocco (ca. 1700), each board with delicate centre-piece a petit fers, rebacked in gold-tooled red morocco. [4], 230 ll. Full description

QUINTUS SMYRNAEUS. Derelictorum ab Homero libri quatuordecim, Iodoco Valar[a]eo interprete. Coluti Thebani Raptus Helenae eodem interprete.
Antwerp, Joannes Steelsius, 1539. Small 8vo. With 16 decorated woodcut initials. Modern blind-tooled calf by the Period Bookbinders in Bath. [4], "CCVII" [= 208] ll. Full description

ROGEL, Hans the elder. Capital und Versal Buech, allerhanndt grosser und kleiner Alphabeth, zue den Hauptschrifften und Büechern, dessgleichen in Canntzleyen unnd gemein, zuegebrauchen ganntz zierlich geordiniert.
Augsburg, Johann Jacob Schönig, [1680/94, printed from the woodblocks of 1568]. Oblong folio (21 x 34 cm). With a richly calligraphic woodcut title-page (18 x 28 cm), with text in white fraktur lettering on black, with a white panel at the foot with the letterpress imprint in a fraktur type; and 9 (of 10) full-page woodcuts (about 17 x 25.5 cm) showing alphabets in white on black, one dated 1568: 8 with decorated gothic capitals (versals: 22-150 mm) and 1 with textura capitals, textura lowercase and roman capitals, all versos blank. With a small and perhaps fragmentary manuscript on parchment (2 ll., 11.5 x 13.5 cm, written on both sides): a Protestant copybook written (soon?) after 1557, probably in Basle or vicinity, with 7 writing samples, including alphabets of capitals and minuscules, the first two pages in fraktur gothic styles, and the last two in humanistic styles. Vellum (ca. 1985?), in a cloth slipcase. [10 (of 11)] ll. Full description