Alcionio, Medices legatus de exsilio, Venice, Aldus, 1522, contemporary red morocco gilt by Claude de Picques

Alcionio, Pietro. Medices legatus, de exsilio. (Venice: in the house of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, November 1522)

A third copy. The Renouard-Turner copy in an exquisite binding by Claude de Picques. The oval centerpiece plaque was used also on a binding made for Mary Queen of Scots as queen of France, on a Paris imprint from 1560, as well as a Breviarium Romanum from 1556 (in the British Library, Davis Gift 394), and on Abbey sale I, Sotheby’s, 21 June 1965, lot 130, color frontispiece.

4to (212 x 134 mm). Italic type, 36 lines plus headline. collation: a-h⁸ i⁶: 70 leaves (e7-8 blank). Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso. (Occasional light staining.)

binding: Parisian red morocco (218 x 138 mm), ca. 1560, elaborately gilt by Claude de Picques, large oval interlaced arabesque plaque and large arabesque corner-pieces, flat spine gilt with small leaf stamp and lettered title, gilt edges.

provenance: Antoine-Augustin Renouard (1765-1853), inscription with inventory number 1305, sale, Evans, London, 26-30 June 1828, lot 54 ("beautiful copy, in richly ornamented antique binding"), £3-16s — Robert Triphook, London — Edward Richard Poole, inscription on title-page — Robert Samuel Turner (1818-1887), bookplate, and loaned by him to the exhibition at the South Kensington Museum (1863), sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 18-30 June 1888, lot 196, £8-15s, to Quaritch. acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Paul Jammes, Paris, 2007. references: UCLA 215; Cataldi Palau 83; Edit16 859; Renouard 95/6. For binding, see M. Foot, The Henry Davis Gift, I (1978) pp. 170-182; cf. III (2010) nos. 70, 71