Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
Sacred Splendor: Judaica from the Arthur and Gitel Marx Collection
Auction Closed
November 20, 08:47 PM GMT
Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
PSALTERIUM, VENICE: DANIEL BOMBERG AND PETRUS LIECHTENSTEIN, 1515
66 folios (8 1/4 x 5 7/8 in.; 211 x 150 mm) (foliation: [1-2], 1-64) on paper; Latin text with some Hebrew words in margins; Hebrew alphabet in margins of Ps. 119 (ff. 53r-56r). Title page printed in black and red ink; four woodcut initials on the first three leaves, one historiated; initial letter of each verse in red ink. Slight scattered staining; small marginal wormhole in first four leaves. Early (contemporary?) elaborately blind-tooled morocco, scratched and worn around edges and on spine; headband partially exposed; spine in three compartments with raised bands; one intact brass clasp catching on fore-edge, bearing initials M.P. (second clasp lost); contemporary paper flyleaves, parchment pastedowns containing fragments of a Latin manuscript written in dark brown ink.
Daniel Bomberg of Antwerp was the first printer of Hebrew books in Venice and the first non-Jewish printer of Hebrew titles anywhere. His numerous later accomplishments included the first edition of the Babylonian Talmud (1519/1520-1522), the first edition of the Jerusalem Talmud (1522-1524; see lot 13), and the first three editions of the Rabbinic Bible (1517, 1524-1525, 1546-1548). By the time his press ceased operations in 1548-1549, it had published more than two hundred titles. The present volume was printed at the press of Petrus Liechtenstein of Cologne, as Bomberg did not yet have a privilege to publish, and translated by Felix Pratensis, future editor of Bomberg’s First Rabbinic Bible (1517).
Literature
A.M. Habermann, Ha-madpis daniyyel bombirgi u-reshimat sifrei beit defuso (Safed: The Museum of Printing Art, 1978), 27 (no. 1).
Marvin J. Heller, The Sixteenth Century Hebrew Book: An Abridged Thesaurus, vol. 1 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2004), 80-81.
Alexander Marx, “Notes on the Use of Hebrew Type in Non-Hebrew Books, 1475-1520”, in Studies in Jewish History and Booklore (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1944), 296-345, at p. 310.
Israel Mehlman, “Beit defuso shel daniel bomberg be-venetsi’ah,” Areshet 3 (1961): 93-98, at pp. 93-96.
Bruce E. Nielsen, “Daniel van Bombergen, a Bookman of Two Worlds,” in Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear (eds.), The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 56-75.
Vinograd, Venice 3h
