Bookbinding, Jean Picard for Jean Grolier, Venice, 1528

Baldassarre Castiglione Il libro del cortegiano del conte Baldesar Castiglione. (Venice: in the house of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, April 1528) Super-Chancery folio (326 x 208 mm).

Collation: *4 a–o8 p6: 122 leaves, roman type, 40 lines plus headline, woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, EACH FINELY HAND-COLOURED AND GILT, ILLUMINATED WITH HAND-COLOURED AND GILT INITIALS, Parisian dark brown morocco (326 x 217 mm) by Jean Picard for Jean Grolier (1540s), richly gold-tooled, covers with lozenge-rectangle interlace with central quadrilobed and outer double interlaced border, large solid tools at angles (Nixon, C. de P. 8a & b, 10), upper cover with title in gilt at centre (“IL CORTEGIANO | DEL CONTE BAL | DESAR CASTI | GLIONE”) and Grolier’s ownership inscription at foot of inner panel tooled over by the motto of a later owner (“TAN.

QVAM. VENTUS. EST. VITA. MEA”), lower cover with Grolier’s motto in gilt at centre, and with Grolier’s ownership inscription added later to foot of lower panel, spine with six raised bands, panels outlined with a single gold line, edges gilt, neatly rebacked and recornered retaining some of original spine, extremities slightly rubbed FIRST EDITION OF A CORNERSTONE TEXT OF RENAISSANCE HUMANISM, IN A MAGNIFICENT BINDING BY JEAN PICARD FOR THE PRE-EMINENT SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH BIBLIOPHILE JEAN GROLIER.

A WIDE-MARGINED COPY. Castiglione's renowned book of manners, set at the court of Urbino, was one of the last books to be printed before the death of Andrea Torresano in October 1528. According to Anthony Hobson, between 1540 and 1547, Grolier commissioned at least 230 bindings from the Parisian bookbinder and bookseller Jean Picard. Most of Grolier's purchases at this time were Aldines, comprising some 134 volumes (Hobson, Renaissance Book Collecting, p. 59). The covers of each binding originally contained Grolier’s ownership inscription (“IO. GROLIERII ET AMICORVM.”) and motto. As the phrase “et amicorum” suggests, Grolier lent his volumes out to his friends.

The spirit of generosity is upheld as a core tenet of courtly manners in Castiglione's treatise, so it is appropriate for Grolier's library to have contained multiple copies. Hobson's census of Grolier bindings lists five copies of the 1528 Aldine edition and four copies of the 1533 second Aldine edition (in 8vo) executed by Picard, plus two further copies of the 1528 edition by other binders. Castiglione did not feature amongst the ten Grolier bindings in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana. Comparison of that copy with the present volume reveals several similarities: both have finely hand-coloured/gilt Aldine devices and initials, the lettering of the title at the centre of the upper cover is identical, and the large solid tool found at the corners of the boards is also the same (Nixon, C. de P. 10).

Intriguingly, on the present copy, Grolier’s motto has been supplanted with that of a later owner (“TAN. QVAM. VENTUS. EST. VITA. MEA”), though the lettering of the original ownership inscription remains partially visible beneath. The supplanted motto is recorded in the Libri Carucci sale catalogue of 1847, and though the identity of the later owner has not yet been established, the motto recurs on a 1499 edition of Colonna’s Poliphilo (cited in Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Bookbindings (London, 1891), p. xxv). The nineteenth-century French provenance of this volume is fascinating.

It was once part of the collection of the notorious bibliomaniac Guglielmo Libri Carucci dalla Sommaja, whose collection boasted seventeen Grolier bindings. The Firmin-Didot sale catalogue note explains that "Ce volume a sa petite légende". After Yemeniz bought the volume in 1847, in a dramatic turn of events it was seized during the judicial investigation against Libri.