De officiis, Paradoxa Stoicorum, De amicitia, De senectute, Somnium Scipionis: PB 11-2020

Current Location: In storage

Titles

De officiis, Paradoxa Stoicorum, De amicitia, De senectute, Somnium Scipionis

Maker(s)

Author: Cicero
Vindelino da Spira
Master of the Putti
Bookbinder: Weir, Maria

Description

Paper, Quarto, 286 x 195 mm, 133 fols. (out of 136 fols., wanting the blank leaves [a1], [r3], [r4]), irregular early foliation in brown ink and modern foliation in pencil

Type: Roman

BINDING: late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, gold-tooled red morocco over pasteboards, presumably by Maria Wier, spine lettered, edges gilt

REFERENCES: ISTC ic00577000; HCR 5257; GW 6926; Bod-inc C-311; BMC V 155; IGI 2888; CIBN C-396

DECORATION
Woodcut initial [Q, 8 ll.] painted in gold with white vine scroll on magenta, blue and green ground for incipit of De officiis (fol.[a2]r), with three-sided border consisting of a woodcut frieze with a pattern of interlaced white vine stems on gold, green, magenta and blue ground in upper margin, a green and gold bar in inner margin that continues into lower margin enclosing a drawing of hybrid creatures and shield, vert, a goat or a bull rampant supporting a tree, on blue, green and magenta ground, a capital ‘Z’ in gold.

ORNAMENTATION
Six gold initials [5-8 ll.] on blue grounds, of which three with green infills and one with triplets of white dots against blue grounds; red penwork initials, some never executed.

Notes

History note: Unidentified arms with initial Z on fol.[a2]r (vert. a red goat or bull rampant supporting a tree); Antoine Marie Pâris d’Illins (1746-1809); sold at auction of Pâris d’Illins’ Bibliotheca Parisiana by James Edwards, bookseller, London, 26 March 1791, lot 70, for £10. 5s; Michael Wodhull (1740-1816), his notes of purchase on recto of front paper endleaf ‘Edward’s sale’ and ‘Apr. 5th 1791’ with associated cost; sold at auction of Wodhull’s library by Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London, 11 January 1886, lot 709, to Quaritch for £15. 10s; Bernard Quaritch, booksellers, cat. 371, Part II: Italy, London, 1887, item 36546; Frank McClean (1837-1904), bookplate inside upper cover; his bequest, 1904.