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View full screen - View 1 of Lot 1018. Augustinus, Opus absolutissimum, Basel, 1522, blind-stamped pigskin with fore-edge painting, Pillone library.

Augustinus, Opus absolutissimum, Basel, 1522, blind-stamped pigskin with fore-edge painting, Pillone library

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December 10, 04:10 PM GMT

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26,000 - 32,000 GBP

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Lot Details

Description

AUGUSTINUS, AURELIUS. En habes optime lector absolutissimi doctoris Aurelii Augustini, opus absolutissimum, de Civitate dei, magnis sudoribus emendatum ad priscae venerandaeque vetustatis exemplaria, per virum clarissimum & undequaque doctissimum Ioan. Lodovicum Vivem Valentinum, & per eundem eruditissimis planeque divo Augustino dignis commentariis sic illustratum… Basel: (Johann Froben), 1 September 1522


First edition of the commentary by Luis Viv▨es o𝔍n Augustine’s City of God.


A volume from the renowned Pillone library, with a fore-edge painting of St Aug🎶ustine writing at a desk. This is one of ten Pillone bindings in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana (see part I, 11 October 2023, lot 52); other volumes are lots 1050, 11𒁃11, 1139 and 1168 in the present sale.


Odorico Pil🌠lone acquired the library of Bonaccorso Grino, who was in the service of Charles V in the 1540s and had a castle near Augsburg, through a marriage between Pillone’s sister and a relative of Grino. These books of German origin account for around 90 volumes of the extant Pillone library. In the 1580s, when Cesare Vecellio was in residence at the Pillone house, Odorico Pillone commissioned the painting of the fore-edges of some of his books, notably depicting the author writing at a desk. The library was kept intact in Belluno until 1874, when it was sold to a Venetian antiques dealer, who then sold 171 volumes with fore-edge paintings to an English collector (he retained one painte𓂃d book for himself). The rest of the library was dispersed piecemeal.


Around 26 volumes from the library were bound in pigskin using similar roll tools (one is illustrated in Europäisches Einbandkunst, number 64). The watermarks (and the location of Grino’s castle) have been used to suggest an Augsburg origin for the bindings. Two of the roll tools match those used by Jörg Bernhardt of Görlitz, active in Heidelberg as the binder of Pfalzgraf Ottheinrich in the 1550s (Einbanddatenbank w004348; Schunke, Die Einbände der Palatina, plate XXX🍸IV, shows a 1550 calf b♏inding by Bernhardt using the same rolls and catchplates).

Folio (364 x 243 mm). Roman type, 48 lines plus headline. collation: aa10+1 a-z A-Z Aa-Rr6 Ss-Tt8: 405 leaves. Title-page with metalcut border by Hans Holbein, aa2 and a1 within woodcut borders, woodcut headpieces and initials, woodcut printer’s device☂ on final verso within woodcut border. (First few quires🎉 damp-stained at head, small wormhole in first few leaves, last few quires with damp-staining at upper corner.)


binding: Near-contemporary south Gerꦉman blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards (379 x 264 mm), sides divided with frames of numerous blind fillets, roll-tooled border depicting the Resurrected Christ, St Paul and King David, upper cover with three vertical lines of a roll-tool depicting pairs of lovers, the lower cover with an inner border with vases, 🍌spine with blind-stamped flower tool, two clasps, later fore-edge painting by Cesare Vecellio (ca 1580) depicting St Augustine seated at a desk in a colonnade with a chequered floor, title lettered down the fore-edge (with the book to be shelved flat), head and foot of textblock with dark pink marbling. (Both lower corners chipped resulting in fraying of the lower corner of textblock, binding slightly soiled and rubbed.)


provenance: [Bonaccorso Grino (died 1553), his library at Schloss Burtembach, near Augsburg] — Odorico Pillone (1503-1594), his library in Casteldardo, near Belluno, inherited by — Giorgio Pillone (1539-1611) — Paolo Maresio Bazolle, who purchased Pillone artworks in 1874, and sold the books with fore-edge paintings to — Sir Thomas Brooke (1830-1908), of Armitage Bridge, armorial bookplate, inherited by — Humphrey Brooke (1914-1988), consigned — Alan Keen Ltd, The Venetian Library collected at the close of the XVI century by Doctor Odorico Pillone and the sides and edges painted by Cesare Vecellio (London, [1947]), item 20 — Pierre Berès, Bibliothèque Pillone bookplate, catalogue (Paris, [1957]), item 82 — Bartolomé March Servera (1917-1998), bookplate — sale, Christie’s, 3 June 1988, lot 56. acquisition: Purchased at the preceding sale. references: VD16 A 4181; A. Hobson, “The Pillone Library”, The Book Collector 7 (1958), 28-37

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