Cei, Sonecti, capituli, canzoni, Florence, Giunta, 1503, contemporary plaquette binding, Fairfax Murray copy

Cei, Francesco. Sonecti, capituli, canzone, sextine, stanze et strambocti composti per lo excellentissimo Francescho Cei ciptadino fiorentino in laude di Clitia. Florence: Filippo Giunta, 1503

First printing of a popular collection of poems in several genres of poesia cortigiana, in which the author (as Alcebano) confesses his love for Cassandra di Bartolomeo Bartolini Salimbeni (as Clizia). There were eight reprints of the collection before 1520. From a family memoir written by a nephew, we learn that Francesco Cei was born on 26 March 1471, and died, unmarried and childless, in Rome in 1505. He says in these poems that his love for Clizia was ignited in 1494, and burned for seven years—until her marriage to the rich Florentine merchant, Carlo di Leonardo Ginori (1473-1527). The author then left Florence, perhaps to assuage his unrequited love, perhaps banished by the Savonarolan faction.

In 1994, Hobson considered the purchase inscription “Ex libris Joannii Francisci Lancellotti de Staphylo qui libras venetas septem” to be early, and presumed that our volume was in the Veneto “not long after publication”. The inscription appears, however, to be later, and that of Giovanni Francesco Lancellotti (1721-1788), an historian and author of an unpublished memoir of the Manuzio family (with catalogue of their publications), who inscribed a copy of Rime di m. Girolamo Molino (Venice 1573), "Ex libris carissimis [sic], Joannis Francisci, Lancellotti de Staphilo" with a price inscription "Solvi obulos quinquaginta" (Biblioteca Marciana, Archivio dei possessori), and his copy of the 1494-1495 Aldine Lascaris "Ex rarissimi Libris Ioannis Francisci Lancellotti de Staphylo Qui dono dedit mihi apriori Anno Domini 1784" (Austin, University of Texas, Uzielli 1).

The binding is stamped with a panel and a plaquette of Julius Caesar, laureate, behind him a lituus, lettered * DIVI IVLI (the star refers to the comet seen after the death of Julius Caesar, the crooked staff or lituus to Caesar’s membership of the priestly College of Augurs). The prototypes for this portrait are believed to be intaglio gems in the Medici collection (Rossi). The bronze plaquette has been dated both 15C and early 16C, and both Roman and Florentine; it is illustrated (in reverse) in Fulvio’s Illustrium imagines (Rome 1517, fol. xvi). Jeremy Warren cited three incuse matrices which may have been used by binders, in the collections of the British Museum, Bargello, and Museo Nazionale di Ravenna. Hobson recorded use of the plaquette on twenty-three bindings from six localities (Venice, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Sicily, Romagna/Marche).

8vo (157 x 95 mm). Italic type, 29 lines. collation: π⁴ a-g⁸ h²: 62 leaves. No printer's device, colophon on h2v, with Giunta called cartolaio, annotations in ink and pencil. (Some staining.)

binding: Italian binding, ca. 1520, brown morocco (160 x 100 mm), panel stamp composed of two interlaced lines forming frame and interior of tendrils, leaves and arabesques, in center medallion bust portrait of Julius Caesar facing right with toga and lituus and words DIVI IVLI, impressed areas painted with liquid gold, traces of four pairs of ties, gilt and gauffered edges, spine with two thick bands, saltires in gilt in central compartment. Housed in a brown cloth box. (Restoration to joints.)

provenance: Giovanni Francesco Lancellotti (1721-1788), inscription on final verso — Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), his sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, London, 17-20 July 1922, lot 243, £7, to Leo S. Olschki, Florence — Libreria Durini, Milan (De Marinis). acquisition: Purchased from Bredford libri rari, Lugano, 1992. references: Pettas, Giunti of Florence 5; Renouard XXXIV/7; Edit16 10684; USTC 821454; Francesco Rossi, La collezione Mario Scaglia: placchette (Bergamo: 2011), I, p.49, no. I-17; Jeremy Warren, Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Medieval and Renaissance sculpture, volume 3: Plaquettes (Oxford: 2014), pp.902-903, nos. 357-358; De Marinis, La Legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence 1960) no. 1681; A. Hobson, Humanists and bookbinders p.221 (Census of Plaquette and Medallion bindings, no. 15m); A. Hobson, “Plaquette and medallion bindings: a supplement” in Bulletin du Bibliophile (1994), p.25