Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge (London)

(25.5 cm), 96 pp., colour frontispiece, [7] plates (1 folding). 526 lots. Publisher’s printed yellow wrappers. - A portion of a celebrated library assembled for the most part by the Dante scholar, George Venables-Vernon, 5th Baron (1803-1866). The most valuable was lot 69, a complete copy of the block-book Biblia Pauperum (belonging to Schreiber’s Group IV, No. 10), which made £440 (now Victoria & Albert Museum, E.720-1918). A 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Boccaccio’s “Fiammetta” and the “Epistolae Heroides” (lot 79), formerly in the Heber and Utterson collections, sold for £154 (subsequently in the Cortlandt Bishop collection, his sale in 1938 lot 288; cf. Vittore Branca, Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio. II, Un secondo elenco di manoscritti e studi sul testo del “Decameron” con due appendici, Rome 1991, pp.30-31, as possibly the manuscript re-sold in Paris, 18 March 1981, lot 24). Early-printed books included the 1516 Ferrara Orlando Furioso (£118; returned to the market in an auction conducted by Libreria antiquaria Hoepli, 7-9 April 1927) and the 1477 Monte Sancto di Dio with engravings after designs attributed to Botticelli (£100). ¶ Unmarked copy. Corner of frontispiece torn away.