Componimenti poetici per l’ingresso solenne alla dignità di proccuratore di S. Marco per merito di sua eccellenza il signor Lodovico Manin
sold
- Subjects
- Bookbinding - Italy, 1701-1800 - Venice
- Bookbindings, Paper
- Festival books and prints - Italy, 1701-1800 - Venice
- Literature, Italian - Early works to 1800
- Authors/Creators
- Gozzi, Conte Gasparo, 1713-1786
- Artists/Illustrators
- Bartolozzi, Francesco, 1727-1815
- Printers/Publishers
- Albrizzi, Giovanni Battista, 1698-1777
- Owners
- Burrus, Maurice, 1882-1959
[Manin, Ludovico]
Venice 1725 – 1802 Venice
Componimenti poetici per l’ingresso solenne alla dignità di proccuratore di S. Marco per merito di sua eccellenza il signor Lodovico Manin
Venice: Giovanni Battista Albrizzi, 1764
folio (370 × 259 mm), (43) ff., signed π2 a-d10 2π1, including engraved allegorical frontispiece (π1), engraved title (π2 recto), engraved portrait of Ludovico Manin (π2 verso), full-page allegorical printer’s device (2π1 recto), 16 engraved head- and tail-pieces, and 40 engraved page borders (each repeated once), by Francesco Bartolozzi (except one vignette, designed by G.B. Piazzetta).
provenance with bookseller Arthur Lauria, Paris — Maurice Burrus (1882-1959), exlibris and acquisition label (dated 1938) — sale by Christie’s, ‘Maurice Burrus (1882-1959): la Bibliothèque d’un homme de goût. Première partie’, Paris, 15 December 2015, lot 133
Binding lightly rubbed, but colour vibrant; one upper corner creased, minor loss at foot of the spine.
bound in contemporary pasteboards, over-covered by a sheet of patterned rose-coloured paste-paper, block-printed in gold with broad woodcut frames incorporating foliage and shell ornament, enclosing a semé of stars and escutcheons bearing the armorial insignia of Ludovico Manin (upper cover) and family monogram (lower cover). Preserved in a morocco-backed box.
This beautiful publication commemorates the election in 1763 of Ludovico Manin (1726-1802) as one of nine Procuratori di San Marco, responsible for the administration of the sestieri ‘de ultra canalem’ (Dorsoduro, Santa Croce, and San Polo). This was a high office, carrying life tenure, second in prestige only to that of the Doge. From the ranks of the Procuracy the Doge was usually chosen, and on 9 March 1789 Ludovico Manin was elected Doge on the first ballot. He was the last Doge of Venice, governing until 1797, when he was forced to abdicate by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The Venetian nobility of Ludovico Manin’s generation marked special occasions – a betrothal or a marriage, election to public office, the entry of a son or daughter into a religious order – with elaborate festivities, including concerts, cantatas, serenatas, recitations of laudatory poems and orations. A souvenir of the occasion often was presented to guests in the shape of a pretty, slender book, in which the texts of the canzoni, madrigals, and sonnets, epistles, or orations, were preserved. By the middle of the eighteenth century, these keepsakes had evolved into sumptuous books, adorned with engraved portraits and allegorical vignettes, each page of text enlivened by an engraved frame.1
The rich Manin family from Friuli chose Giovanni Battista Albrizzi (1698-1777), the most distinguished publisher in Venice, to print three souvenirs of Ludovico’s ingresso into the august ranks of the Procurators of San Marco.2 Our book is ‘by far the grandest’ of these three, ‘widely agreed to be the finest example of what may be called “presentation books”’, ‘an epitome of magnificence and invention’ and ‘one of the greatest illustrated books of its period’.3 It contains a dedication in verse by Conte Gasparo Gozzi (1713-1786) and contributions from some thirty-five authors,4 including ‘Canzone a sua eccellenza Elisabetta Grimani procuratessa Manino’ by Cristina Roccati (1734-1814)5 and sonnets by Camilla Solar d’Asti Fenaroli (1723-1769).6
Albrizzi’s publications were especially noted for their engraved ornaments and vignettes, often designed by the finest Venetian engravers. His first books to have engraved borders decorating every page were the 1746 nozze Marc’Antonio Grimani‒Maria Pisani and 1753 ingresso Luigi Pisani; in both, frames designed by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta are repeated throughout.7 Albrizzi’s next such book was the 1763 ingresso Gian Francesco Pisani. For this, the Florentine printmaker Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815), resident in Venice since 1748, designed and engraved a set of twenty page borders, employed in pairs, each pair printed four times.8
Albrizzi engaged Bartolozzi again for the 1764 ingresso Ludovico Manin, commissioning a new set of twenty engraved page frames. These were used together with the earlier set, so that each border now appeared only twice.9 Bartolozzi also produced for the new publication a frontispiece, title-plate, portrait, and six vignettes (head- and tail-pieces).10 ‘Together with the Ingresso for Gian Francesco Pisani (1763), this book stands as the ideal synthesis of Bartolozzi’s extraordinary technical and stylistic virtuosity in book decoration’.11
Our copy is preserved in its original ‘presentation binding’ of rose-coloured carte remondiniane, the covers block-printed in gold with a design in the same taste as the decoration within, to ‘suggest the sumptuous character of rich contemporary gold-tooling on leather bindings’.12 The copy was first cased in bare boards, then over-covered with a sheet of paste-paper which had been coloured to look like cloth or leather and block-printed.13 The entire cover was printed from a single, large woodblock. Two frames were cut in the block, with slight variations in cutting: one frame encloses an escutcheon bearing the Manin arms (upper cover); the other an escutcheon displaying the family monogram (lower cover). Separating the two frames is a column of alternating diamond and star ornaments (cover spine).
The earliest known binding of this type covers the 1757 ingresso Lorenzo Morosini as Procuratore (printed by Antonio Zatta), where however the design is achieved from an etched and engraved copperplate.14 Some copies of the 1763 ingresso Gian Francesco Pisani (printed by G.B. Albrizzi) are in comparable bindings, in this instance with the design printed from a woodblock.15 The woodblock used the following year for the covers of Albrizzi’s ingresso Ludovico Manin is cut in a still more pronouncedly rococo style. A semé of stars is incorporated and the covers of the new binding now harmonise perfectly with the page frames and other engraved decoration within.16 No subsequent use of the woodblock has been observed. Reduced copies were used to decorate the covers of Albrizzi’s other 1764 presentation book for Manin17 and on Albrizzi’s 1764 nozze Barbaro-Barbarigo, in the latter instance with the Barbaro arms and monogram displayed on the escutcheons.18 The great majority of extant copies of all these books are in ordinary paper bindings, or otherwise bound.
These other copies in paper covers featuring the Manin arms are recorded:
● London, National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, Piot H.49819 ● Los Angeles, Getty Research Institute, 87-B2047120 ● Washington, DC, Andrew Robison collection21 ● Washington, DC, Library of Congress, Rosenwald collection, DG678.49.C622 ● Washington, DC, Library of Congress23 ● Unlocated (with J. Irving Davis, booksellers David & Orioli, in 1953)24 ● Unlocated (with Ursus Books, New York, 1988)25 ● Unlocated (with Libreria Antiquaria Mediolanum, Milan, 2016)26
No copies once owned by members the Manin family have been identified.27
references Giuseppe Morazzoni, Il Libro illustrato veneziano del Settecento (Milan 1943) pp.195, 272; Il libro illustrato nel Settecento a Venezia. Catalogo della mostra, June-July 1955, edited by Tullia Gasparrini Leporace (Venice 1955), pp.48-49 no. 95 (copy in Biblioteca Marciana, 232 D.98); Silvia Bianchi, ‘Francesco Bartolozzi e l’editoria veneziana del Settecento’ in Grafica d’Arte 43 (July-September 2000), pp.8-13 (pp.9-10 and figs. 3-4); Paolo Delorenzi, ‘Lo spettacolo delle celebrazioni: i libri d’occasion’ in Tiepolo, Piazzetta, Novelli: il libro illustrato del Settecento veneto, catalogue for an exhibition held at Musei Civici agli Eremitani, Palazzo Zuckermann, Padua, 2012-2013 (Treviso 2012), pp.336-339 no. VI.6 (Padua, Biblioteca civica, H27476)
1. Alberta Pettoello, Libri illustrati veneziani del Settecento: le pubblicazioni d’occasione (Venice 2005), provides an introductory essay on this kind of publication, followed by an exhaustive catalogue, divided into three sections: ‘Raccolte nuziali’, ‘Gratulatorie’, and ‘Raccolte per monacazioni’; our book is noticed pp.253-257 no. 330 (pp.562-569 figs. 385-415). Anne Palms Chalmers, ‘Venetian book design in the eighteenth century’ in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, new series, 29 (1971), pp.226-235 (p.235).
2. The other publications are a 24-page encomium to Ludovico Manin by Conte Gasparo Gozzi (Delle lodi di sua eccellenza il signor Ludovico Manino proccuratore di San Marco per merito orazione, Venice: Nella stamperia Albrizzi, 1764); and a 192-page collection of verse by various authors (Poesie d’autori diversi per l’ingresso glorioso di Sua Eccellenza il Signor Lodovico Manino alla dignità di proccuratore di S. Marco per merito, Venice: Nella stamperia Albrizzi, 1764). On 2 May 1764, Gozzi was paid for editing ‘Raccolta, e orazione in occasion di suo ingresso’ (Martina Frank, Virtù e fortuna: il mecenatismo e le committenze artistiche della famiglia Manin tra Friuli e Venezia nel XVII e XVIII secolo, Venice 1996, p.200 note 99).
3. Andrew Robison, in Vision of a collector: the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection in the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division (Washington, DC 1991), pp.352-357 no. 82 (quotations on pp.352, 353, 355, 356).
4. Cristina Roccati, of Rovigo; Camilla Solar d’Asti Fenaroli, of Brescia; Daniello Florio; Antonio Spolverini dal Verme (Accademia Filarmonica di Verona); Francesco Zanotti, of Bologna; Abate Giovanni Marenzi, of Bergamo; Conte Rufin Campagna; Ottaviano Pellegrino; Conte Giannicola Alfonso Montanari, of Verona; Marchese Giovanni Gagramoso, of Verona; Conte Ignazio da Persico (Accademia Filarmonica di Verona); Domenico Lunghi, of Verona; Benedetto Borsatti, of Verona; Alessandro Carli, of Verona; Guglielmo Camposampiero; Conte Antonmaria Borromeo (Accademia dei Ricovrati, Padua); Luca Antonio Pagnini (carmelitano, professor at Parma and Pisa); Conte Gulielmo Bevilaqua; Conte Pietro da Persico (Accademia Filarmonica di Verona); Marchese Giorgio Spolverini da Verme; Menclete Bitilasio; Giangirolamo Brunello (Accademia dei Ricovrati, Padua); Conte Aurelio Terra Rossa Bernieri (Colonia d’Arcadia Parmense); Giuseppe Colpani, of Brescia; Cristoforo Marangoni; Romualdo Sasso, of Rovigo (Accademia de’ Concordi, Rovigo); Giovanni Biscaccia Carrara, of Rovigo (Accademia de’ Concordi, Rovigo); Marchese Ottaviano Spolverini dal Verme; Francesco Capello, of Brescia; Carlo Antonio Luzzago, of Brescia; Conte Antonio Montanari; Antonio Lambertenghi (chierico regolare Somasco); Conte Luigi Cocastelli, marchese di Montiglio; Carlo Roncalli, of Brescia; and anonymous authors.
5. Elected president of the Accademia de’ Concordi di Rovigo in 1754; cf. Paula Findlen, ‘A forgotten Newtonian: Women and science in the Italian provinces’ in The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, edited by William Clark (Chicago 1999), pp.313-349; Laura Soppelsa and Eva Viani, ‘Dal Newtonianismo per le dame al Neutonianismo delle dame. Cristina Roccati una savante del settecento Veneto’ in Donne filosofia e cultura nel seicento, edited by Pina Tortaro (Rome 1999), pp.211-240.
6. Luana Marini, ‘Storia di una poetessa bresciana nell’ età dei Lumi: Camilla Solar d’Asti Fenaroli’ in Civiltà bresciana: Rivista trimestrale della Fondazione civiltà bresciana 11 (2002), pp.65-68; Anna Vitale, ‘Camilla Solar D’ Asti Fenaroli: 1723-1769’ in Le stanze segrete: le donne bresciane si rivelano, edited by Elisabetta Selmi (Brescia 2008), pp.297-310.
7. Poesie varie nel solenne sposalizio di Sue Eccellenze il signor Marc’ Antonio Grimani e la signora Maria Pisani, dedicate al Serenissimo Doge di Venezia Pietro Grimani, zio dello sposo (Venezia, Nella Stamperia Albrizzi, 1746). The illustration in this book was designed by G.B. Piazzetta and etched by Giuseppe Camerata (frontispiece), Giovanni Cattini (portrait), Cattini and Piazzetta (vignettes and page-borders). We owe our knowledge of this rare book (copies in NYPL, Spencer Collection, Ital. 1746 80-274; Venice, Fondazione Cini, FOAN TES 462) entirely to Dr. Andrew Robison, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (private communication to the writer, 27 January 2016).
8. Componimenti poetici per l’ingresso solenne alla dignità di procuratore di S. Marco per merito di Sua Eccellenza il signor Gian-Francesco Pisani (Venice: nella stamperia Albrizzi, 1763); Pettoello, op. cit. (2005), pp.246-248 no. 324 and figs. 379, 382.
9. In this copy the ‘new’ borders enclose folios a1r + c1r [fig. 387], a2r + c2r [414], a3r + c3r, a4r + c4r [389], a5r + c5r [390], a6v + c6v [392], a7v + c7v [393], a8v + c8v [394], a9v + c9v [396], a10v + c10v [397], b1r + d2r, b2r + d1r [399], b3r + d3r [400], b4r + d4r [401], b5r + d5r [403], b6v + d6v [406], b7v + d7v [408], b8v + d8v 410], b9v + d10v [411], b10v + d9v [413] (if reproduced by Pettoello, op. cit., 2005, her illustration number within brackets); cf. Augusto Calabi, Francesco Bartolozzi: catalogue des estampes et notice biographique d’après les manuscrits de A. de Vesme, entièrement réformés et complétés d’une étude critique (Milan 1928), pp.396-399 nos. 1538-1557. ‘Old’ borders enclose folios a1v + c1v [398], a2v + c2v, a3v + c3v [388], a4v + c4v, a5v + c5v [391], a6r + c6r [415], a7r + c7r [393], a8r + c8r, a9r + c9r [395], a10r + c10r, b1v + d2v [398], b2v + d1v, b3v + d3v, b4v + dv4 [402], b5v + d5v [404], b6r + d6r [405], b7r + d7r [407], b8r + d8r [409], b9r + d10r, b10r + d9r [412] (Pettoello illustration numbers in brackets); cf. Calabi, op. cit. (1928), pp.400-401 nos. 1565-1584 (noting which matrices were reworked for the new edition).
10. Calabi, op. cit. (1928), no. 1535 (frontispiece), 1536 (title), 1537 (portrait), 558-1563 (head- and tail-pieces). The ‘new’ vignettes occur on folios a1r, a4r, a7r, b10r, d3r, d5r; the ‘old’ vignettes were employed in Albrizzi’s 1763 ingresso Gian Francesco Pisani (see note 8, above), except for one (folio b5v) designed by G.B. Piazzetta for Albrizzi’s 1753 ingresso Luigi Pisani. Cf. Pettoello, op. cit. (2005), p.256 (stating five vignettes appear here for the first time). Bartolozzi’s portrait is not derived from the painting commissioned by the Manin family in April 1764 from Alessandro and Pietro Longhi (Civici Musei di Udine), afterwards engraved by Carlo Orsolini; see Martina Frank, ‘Lodovico Manin mecenate’ in Al servizio dell’amatissima patria: le Memorie di Lodovico Manin e la gestione del potere nel Settecento veneziano, edited by Dorit Raines (Venice 1997), pp.179-189 (p.187 note 9 and fig. 2). Paolo Delorenzi, La galleria di Minerva: il ritratto di rappresentanza nella Venezia del Settecento (Venice 2009), p.338 (PSM 97) and fig. 185. The matrice was reused by Albrizzi in 1772, cancelling the portrait of Manin for one of Giovanni Girolamo Zuccato (cf. Pettoello, op. cit., 2005, pp.272-274 no. 359).
11. Giorgio Marini, in The glory of Venice: art in the eighteenth century, catalogue for an exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1994, and National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1995, edited by Jane Martineau and Andrew Robison (New Haven & London 1994), p.428 no. 245.
12. Robison, op. cit. (1991), p.356.
13. On this tight-to-spine construction, see Barbara Rhodes, ‘18th and 19th Century European and American Paper Binding Structures’ in Book and Paper Group Annual 14 (1995), pp.51-62 (online).
14. Componimenti poetici per l’ingresso solenne: alla dignita di procuratore di S. Marco per merito di sua eccellenza il signor cavaliere Lorenzo Morosini (Venice: Nella stamperia di Antonio Zatta, 1757). Robison, op. cit. (1991), pp.355-356: ‘The design is printed in black or blue from an etched and engraved copperplate onto a plain or lightly toned paper, with some subsequent hand coloring’; Robison has since encountered the 1757 Zatta Morosini with the copperplate printed in red (private communication to the writer, 27 January 2016). The copy in the Houghton Library, f 52L-1113, is bound ‘in contemporary stiffened decorated paper covers with armorial designs engraved on front and back covers; engravings hand-colored in yellow, blue and green’ (Library OPAC); Eleanor M. Garvey, ‘Some Venetian illustrated books of the eighteenth century in the Harvard College Library’ in Bulletin du Bibliophile (1999), pp.293-309 (binding reproduced p.307 fig. 9).
15. See Robison, op. cit. (1991), p.256 (printed in gold from a woodblock, on ‘delicate rose-coloured paper that had been previously paste-printed with a slightly darker version of the same color, in a pattern of abstract flowers set into leaf-formed diamonds’). The Morgan Library copy, PML 62048, is bound in ‘turquoise paste-paper with gilt-blocked Pisani arms’ (catalogue).
16. I am indebted to Andrew Robison for observations about the transformation in style from the 1763 ingresso Pisani to the 1764 ingresso Manin (private communications to the writer, 27 January 2016 and 23 February 2016).
17. Poesie d’autori diversi per l’ingresso glorioso di Sua Eccellenza il Signor Lodovico Manino alla dignità di Procuratore di S. Marco per merito (Venice: Nella stamperia Albrizzi, 1764); see note 2 above. Border blocked in gold onto off-white, glazed paper. Copy offered by Daniel Thierstein Buchantiquariat, Gerechtigkeitsgasse, 3011 Bern, Switzerland (accessed 27 January 2016; entry); this is now in the library of Dr. Andrew Robison, Washington, DC.
18. Poesie per le nozze solenni del N.U.E. Giovanni Barbaro del fu mr. Almorò proc. di S.M. con la N.D. Chiara Barbarigo: dedicate a S.E. Cecilia Emo procuratessa Barbaro, madre amorosa dello sposo (Venice: Nella stamperia Albrizzi, 1764). Border blocked in gold onto black paper. Copy offered by Susanne Schulz-Falster Rare Books, ‘A magnificent collection of forty Italian ‘presentation’ or festival books’, London [2007], item 31 (illustrated p.15; image); this is now in the Library of Congress.
19. Original rose-coloured paste-paper, block-printed border, Manin arms and monogram on covers. Provenance: Eugène Piot (1812-1890). The binding is identical to the copy here described. Library OPAC.
20. ‘Bound in gold embossed paper’. Provenance: Victor Stedingk, exlibris — Bernard Quaritch Ltd. — Ursus Books (‘Catalogue 115: Illustrated and Rare Books’, New York 1987, item 49). Library OPAC.
21. ‘Original purple broccato d’oro paper wrappers’. Provenance: Thomas Stonor, 7th Baron Camoys (born 1940) — Christie’s, ‘Valuable printed books and manuscripts … an important library of early architectural works, the property of a nobleman [Stonor]’, London, 9 December 1983, lot 159 (£400) — Ursus Books, New York.
22. Dark on light rose paste-paper, block-printed border, Manin arms and monogram. Provenance: Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855), exlibris; Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 23 April 1890, lot 1188 (sold to Quaritch). Frederick R. Goff, A Catalog of important recent additions to the Lessing J. Rosenwald collection selected for exhibition at the Library of Congress, June 1948 (Washington, DC 1948), p.51 no. 81 (as ‘one of the earliest specimens of silver-embossed paper bindings. Such bindings in fine condition are of excessive rarity’); Venice, 1700-1800: an exhibition of Venice and the eighteenth century, Detroit Institute of Arts and John Herron Art Museum (Detroit 1952), p.76 no. 126;. A Catalog of the gifts of Lessing J. Rosenwald to the Library of Congress, 1943 to 1975 (Washington, DC 1977), p.288 no. 1576; Robison, op. cit. (1991), pp.356-357; The glory of Venice, op. cit. (1994), pp.350-351, 428 no. 245 (upper cover reproduced). Library OPAC. Lower cover (image).
23. ‘Original purple blind-stamped boards, with the Manin arms to center of upper board’. Acquired by the Library of Congress from Susanne Schulz-Falster Rare Books, ‘A collection of Venetian presentation books’, London [2007], item 5 (entry).
24. ‘Original printed wrappers, the sides entirely covered with stamped designs and in the centre the Manin arms’. Copy exhibited in The Italian book, 1465-1900: catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Book League and the Italian Institute, January to March 1953 (London 1953), p.54 no. 136.
25. Copy cited by Robison, op. cit. (1991), p.457 (note). According to Robison (private communication to the writer, 27 January 2016), the copy was presented to Dr. Franklin Murphy, and its present location unknown.
26. ‘Bella legatura editoriale in tutto cartoncino ricoperto da una carta color ocra con impressa una larga bordura… al centro dei piatti stemma e monogramma della famiglia Manin’. Libreria Antiquaria Mediolanum, Catalogo 44: Libri Antichi e rari (Milan 2016), item 98 (binding reproduced).
27. No copy is listed in the printed catalogue of the Manin ‘Biblioteca friulana’: Codroipo. La raccolta a stampa dei nobili Manin nella villa di Passariano, edited by Giuliana Ferrara, (Fiume Veneto-Pordenone 1996), where however copies of the two related publications of 1764 (see above, note 2) are found (nos. 1481, 2498). On the sale of the Manin library, see Dorit Raines, ‘Una collezione pregiata del Settecento veneziano: la libreria dell’ultimo doge, Lodovico Manin’ in Splendori di una dinastia. L’eredità europea dei Manin e dei Dolfin, edited by Gilberto Ganzer (Milan 1996), pp.89-91; Theodor Oswald Weigel, ‘Katalog des Antiquarischen Lagers, Drittes Supplement’ [Katalog der werthvollen Bibliothek Ludovico Manini’s des letzten Dogen von Venedig] (Leipzig 1867), pp.957-1015 nos. 19341-20458.