Cicero, Epistolae familiares, Venice, Aldus, 1502, printed on vellum, illuminated, Renouard-Vernon-Uzielli copy

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. M.T.C. Epistolae familiares. (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, April 1502)

The first Cicero edition produced by the Aldine Press, one of three recorded copies printed on vellum. This is one of three known copies printed on vellum, finely illuminated for an unidentified member of the Frescobaldi family. Its next recorded owner is Antoine-Augustin Renouard (1765-1853), who acquired it at some date between 1812 and 1825. When Renouard disposed of it, in 1834, in an auction conducted in London by Robert Harding Evans, it realised the top price of the sale, exceeding that realised for a copy on vellum of the 1468 Mainz Justinianus.

The first page of text is embellished with an architectural frame, decorative and figural motifs. At the foot is a shield blazoned with the arms of the Frescobaldi, a prominent Florentine noble family (Troncato d’oro e di rosso, a tre rocchi di scacchiere d’argento, 2.1, nel secondo). The decorative vocabulary can be identified as Venetian and an attribution to the “Maestro di Pico” or to an artist from his workshop was proposed when this volume was offered for sale in 2001. Helena Szépe acknowledged similarities with the work of another Venetian illuminator of printed works, dubbed by her “The First Pisani Master”, but supposed the illumination was by “a different, perhaps Florentine hand” (Szépe, “Bordon, Dürer and modes of illuminating Aldines” in Aldus Manutius and Renaissance Culture, pp.185-200, esp. p.191). Little seems to be known about the Frescobaldi family library or about its dispersal. Another volume bearing their painted arms (folio a2 recto) is the 1490 Ptolemy, Cosmographia (Morgan Library & Museum, 135316). Renouard had misconstrued the arms as those of the dedicatee, Thurzó.

8vo (152 x 95 mm.). Printed on vellum, italic type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: a-z⁸ aa-kk⁸ ll⁴: 268 leaves (without final blank). First page of text with contemporary architectural decoration by the Master of the Pico Pliny or his workshop, arms of the Frescobaldi family of Florence at foot, initials and paraphs supplied in red and blue. (First few leaves slightly rubbed with a stain in the lower half of the gutter, small stain at foot of first half of volume, decorated page trimmed at edges.)

binding: Crushed blue morocco gilt by Charles Lewis (158 x 105 mm), with his ticket, gilt-tooled in Renaissance style to a strapwork design with arabesque decoration, spine similarly gilt in compartments, gilt edges, modern crushed green morocco drop-backed box by James Brockman.

provenance: Frescobaldi family of Florence, armorial on a2 — Antoine-Auguste Renouard (1765-1853), Catalogue de la bibliothèque d'un amateur (1819), II, p.86, sale, R.H. Evans, 23-30 June 1834, lot 259, £69, to Payne & Foss — George John Warren, 5th Baron Vernon (1802-1866), listed in the manuscript library catalogue of Sudbury Hall — Robert Stayner Holford (1808-1892), sale, Sotheby & Co., 5-9 December 1927, lot 191, £110, to Bernard Quaritch — Giorgio Veroli (1890-1952), sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 28-29 February 1956, lot 227, $900 — Giorgio Uzielli (1915-1984), checklist of his Aldine books at a Grolier Club exhibition, 1962-1963, item 19 — [John F. Fleming] — Haven O'More (1929-2008), morocco booklabel, sale of The Garden Ltd, Sotheby's, New York, 9-10 November 1989, lot 36, $220,000 — Ladislaus von Hoffmann (1927-2014) — Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 28 November 2001, lot 27. acquisition: Purchased from Christie's sale via Robin Halwas. references: UCLA 55; Aldo Manuzio tipografo 58; Edit16 12160; Renouard 33/2 (mentioning this copy); Van Praet, Vélins... Bibliothèques publiques, II, p. 255, 550 (this copy), IV p. 108 (copy at Florence); Grolier/Legacy 33 (this copy). For illumination, see Lilian Armstrong, "The Pico Master: A Venetian Miniaturist of the Late Quattrocento," in her Studies of Renaissance Miniaturists in Venice (2 vols., 2003), pp. 233-338; G. Scott Clemons & H. George Fletcher, Aldus Manutius: A legacy more lasting than bronze (New York 2015), no. 33