Sixteenth-century Italian manuscript about war craft, illustrated in colour, in a red morocco binding, c.1581

ITALIAN MILITARY MANUSCRIPT

Sixteenth-century Italian manuscript about war craft, with 60 coloured illustrations, in a fine contemporary binding, gilt-stamped 1581 on the cover

titled "Libro utillissimo et molto necessario di varii secreti importantissimi per l'essercitio di guerra, come appare nela seguente indice", containing sixty coloured illustrations, seven on large folding sheets, mainly full-page, the text comprising eight chapters dealing with the duties of the captain, making gunpowder, siege-breaking devices, the deployment through artillery of artificial fire, smoke and poisonous fumes, the use of cannons, ballistics and artillerymen, and on the logistics and practice of moving artillery and cavalry

201 leaves, table of contents (ff.14), foliated 1-187, 4to, watermark: a bird on 3 hillocks [Briquet 12,250 (c.1566-1583)], sixteenth-century red morocco (probably German), gilt-stamped border fillet, cornerpieces and centrepiece dated 1581, modern slipcase, some paper-loss through oxidation of the ink, restored and silked, some show-through, rebacked retaining part of the old spine [by Zaehnsdorf in 1919], lacking ties

An unusual and attractive Italian Renaissance manuscript with coloured illustrations on folding sheets. The title of the first chapter accords with that in an earlier manuscript in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence (Ms 2525) "Il primo capo tratta universalmente dell'uffitio del capitano dell' Arteglieria, con che ordine, modo et diligenza egli habbia à procedure, ad ogni cosa appartinenti alla munitione dell' Artegl[eri]a et all' ufficio suo" [cf. Mariano D'Ayala, Bibliografia militare-italiana (1854), p.159]. The third chapter contains illustrations of siege devices similar to those in Franz Helm's Armamentarium Principale oder Kriegsmunition und Artillerey-Buch (1625, see lot 237), which was originally written in around 1530.

PROVENANCE:

This was in the library of Wistow Hall, Leicester, during the lifetime of Sir Henry St John Halford Bt (1828-1897) but nothing is known as to how or when it came there" (note on flyleaf by Lord Cottesloe dated September 1945)