Bound by Luigi Lodigiani for Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy and Patron of the Milan Art Academy
sold
Accademia di belle arti (Milan)
Discorsi letti nella grande aula del Palazzo Reale delle scienze e delle arti in Milano, in occasione della solenne distribuzione de’premj della R. Accademia delle belle arti, fattasi da S.F. il Sig. Conte Ministro dell’Interno il giorno xi agosto mdcccxii.
Milan, Stamperia Reale, 1812
octavo (210 × 128 mm), (32) ff. signed 1–48 and paginated 1–63 (1).
provenance bound for Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Prince of Venice, Viceroy of Italy (1781–1824) — Count Jean-Louis Temple de Rougemont (1910–1990) and Countess Louise du Temple de Rougemont (née Louise Lejeune, 1913–2002) — sale by Sotheby’s, ‘Provenances impériales: Bibliothèque du Général et de la Comtesse du Temple de Rougemont’, Paris, 6 December 2006, lot 70
In fine state of preservation.
bound in contemporary straight-grain, red morocco, arms of the kingdom of Italy as created by Napoleon blocked in gold on both covers within roll-tooled frames of Neoclassical ornament, the flat back decorated by interlinked quatrefoils and lettered Distrib | de | Premj, another roll on turn-ins, the board edges ornamented by a single fillet; by Luigi Lodigiani of Milan, his oval, yellow engraved ticket Lodigiani | Relieur | de S.A.I. | à Milan pasted in upper corner of front free-endpaper.
A fine binding by Luigi Lodigiani of Milan (1777–1843) on a volume issued in 1812 by the Milanese Academy of fine arts, in which the prize-winners in the annual students’ competitions (architecture, painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing) are published, together with a catalogue of the display of the academicians’ production, the texts of two discorsi: one delivered by the Secretary of the Academy and Professor of Architecture, Giuseppe Zanoia (1752–1817), the other by Luigi Rossi, ‘Ispettore generale della Direzione di pubblica Istruzzione’ (1776–1824), and a list of the forty-five members of the Academy, headed by the Viceroy of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais (1781–1824).
As the insignia on the covers incorporates elements of the coat of arms of Napoleon i, including the eagle, the chain of the Légion d’honneur, and imperial mantle, and in addition the Napoleonic star and Napoleonic n, our volume – like other books featuring the same insignia – has been misidentified as a book bound for Napoleon himself.1 The arms are in fact those of the kingdom of Italy (decreed on 18 February 1806), which Eugène de Beauharnais applied on certain of his books. Curiously, Napoleon never assigned any arms to his adopted son: before his appointment as Viceroy, Eugène employed his father’s arms; thereafter, until the end of the kingdom in 1814, he showed his ownership by the present insignia, or by an eagle with the Lombard crown,2 or – after his marriage on 1 April 1806, to Augusta-Amalia of Bavaria (1788–1851) – by the monogram ea surmounted by the electoral crown.
After Napoleon’s abdication, Eugène de Beauharnais retired to Munich, where he was created Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstätt. He succeeded in taking many of his books with him, and continued to collect avidly.3 His accomplishment as bibliophile however was hidden, until a series of four auction sales of the Leuchtenberg library, conducted 1928–1935,4 ‘revealed him as the most important book-lover to have appeared in Italy for over a century’.5
The discovery of Leuchtenberg library focused attention on the binder Luigi Lodigiani, whose work for the Viceroy’s General Secretary, Étienne Méjan (Mejean), Comte d’Empire (1766–1846), had already been noted.6 Lodigiani’s other notable clients were the Emperor Francis i,7 Archduke Rainer of Austria,8 and by repute Napoleon (this information may be based on the traditional misreading of the Beauharnais arms as those of Napoleon);9 he must, however, have operated a large shop, and catered for numerous clients, as substantial quantities of his bindings are now being identified, not only locally, in the Ambrosiana, Braidense10 and Trivulziana11 in Milan, the Biblioteca Statale di Cremona,12 and Biblioteca Civica Queriniana in Brescia,13 but also in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, Universitätsbibliothek Graz,14 and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. A preliminary organisation of these bindings according to type is well-underway.15
Lodigiani worked in Paris in 1807–1808 and adopted the conventions of the Bozerian style. A roll used on this binding resembles one associated with Jean-Claude Bozerian (1762–1840),16 another roll is a copy of one associated with the Duplanil bindery.17
The Discorsi of the Milan academy was published annually from 1806. Another volume in the series (commemorating the competition held in 1810), bound by Lodigiani using the same armorial block, was in the Mortimer L. Schiff collection.18 Neither it nor the present volume can be traced in the 1928–1935 Leuchtenberg sale catalogues.19
A fine set of the Discorsi – though not containing the present volume – is in the Getty Research Institute20 and another is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense;21 most libraries, however, hold individual volumes (the National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc, possess 1810 only). No copy of this 1812 edition is located in the United Kingdom (according to copac); five copies are cited in the Italian census (iccu):
● Cremona, Biblioteca statale ● Crescentino, Biblioteca civica De Gregoriana ● Milan, Biblioteca comunale – Palazzo Sormani (mistakenly as 46pp.) ● Milan, Biblioteca delle Civiche raccolte storiche, Inv. 10047, shelfmark MPP.344322 ● Parma, Biblioteca Palatina
and these are recorded elsewhere
● Lugano, Biblioteca Salita dei frati Lugano23 ● Milan, Biblioteca dell’Associazione Famiglia Meneghina24
references Leopoldo Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal conte Cicognara (Pisa 1821), no. 1337 (within series); Fabia Borroni Salvadori, ‘Il Cicognara’: bibliografia dell’archeologia classica e dell’arte italiana, i /2 (Florence 1955), pp.39–40 no. 1514 (1812 edition)
1. See provenance above (the bindings on lots 33, 49, 70 all are misinterpreted by Sotheby’s cataloguers). For correct readings of the insignia, see A.R.A. Hobson, French and Italian collectors and their bindings: illustrated from examples in the library of J.R. Abbey (Oxford 1953), pp.171 note 5, 183 (‘Appendix e’); and Martin Breslauer, Inc., ‘Catalogue 110: Fine books and manuscripts in fine bindings’, New York, circa 1995, item 177. Although not the urtext, the error has been circulated widely by Eugéne Olivier, Georges Hermal, and Robert de Roton, Manuel de l’amateur de reliures armoriées françaises (Paris 1924–1935), no. 2675 (the arms block on our volume is reproduced as fer 2).
2. Hobson, op. cit., p.171.
3. See Princeton University Library, ‘Eugène de Beauharnais Archive (C0645): A Finding Aid’, prepared by David Rollo with assistance from Barbara Volz and John Delaney (1991), no. 144: ‘Bills, Letters, Invoices, Receipts, & Lists’ relating to ‘Bookstores, 1817–1822’ (link).
4. The library of Eugène and Augusta-Amalia was dispersed in two sales by Paul Graupe, ‘Auktion 81: Die Bibliothek der Herzogin Augusta-Amalia von Leuchtenberg-Beauharnais’, Berlin, 22–23 October 1928, 894 lots (cf. lot 310, bound by Lodigiani with same insignia appearing on our binding); and ‘Auktion 87: Die Bibliothek des Herzogs Georgij N [ikolaevich, Duke] von Leuchtenberg, und Beiträge aus anderem Besitz’, Berlin, 15–16 April 1929, 1267 lots (cf. Taf. 43, a binding with the same insignia appearing on our binding); and in two sales conducted jointly by Ulrico Hoepli and Braus-Riggenbach, ‘Bibliothèque Eugène de Beauharnais (Vice-Roi d’Italie et Duc de Leuchtenberg) et des Ducs de Leuchtenberg provenant du Château de Seeon en Bavière’, Zurich, 23–24 May 1935, 301 lots; and ‘La Biblioteca di Eugenio de Beauharnais, Vicerè d’Italia’, Milan, 20–22 November 1935, 226 lots (Tavole xi, xvi, xxv, xix reproduce bindings with the insignia appearing on our binding).
5. Hobson, op. cit., p.171.
6. Max Husung, Bucheinbände aus der Preussischen Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Leipzig 1925), plates 87–94.
7. See Martin Breslauer, Inc., ‘Catalogue 104: Fine books in fine bindings’, New York, circa 1990, item 241, a book printed 1815 bound for Francis i, signed (on the spine) Lodisiani [sic] Rel.
8. Federico and Livio Macchi, Dizionario illustrato della legatura (Milan 2002), p.270 reproducing a binding of circa 1820.
9. Charles Ramsden, French bookbinders, 1789–1848 (London 1950), p.131.
10. Federico Macchi, ‘Il census delle legature di pregio della Braidense. Dieci essemplari dal Quattrocento all’ Ottocento’ in Charta 34 (May–June 1998), p.30, fig. 9.
11. Macchi and Macchi, op. cit. (2002), p.537.
12. Federico Macchi, Fra libro antico e moderno: Luigi Lodigiani e la legatura del primo ’800, catalogue of an exhibition, Biblioteca Statale di Cremona, 16–30 April 2010 (Cremona 2010), describing and reproducing 86 bindings.
13. Federico Macchi, ‘Le legature di Luigi Lodigiani, legatore di Corte a Milano nell’Ottocento, nella Biblioteca civica Queriniana di Brescia’ in Misinta 29 (June 2007), pp.25–40.
14. Werner Hohl, ‘Lodigiani auch in Graz’ in Einbandforschung. Informationsblatt des Arbeitskreises für die Erfassung und Erschließung Historischer Bucheinbände 16 (April 2005), p.49; cf. W. Hohl, ‘Einbandbereitung’, in Universitätsbibliothek der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz: Jahresbericht 2004 (Graz 2004), p.66 (reporting the discovery there by Federico Macchi of twenty-three bindings by Lodigiani).
15. Macchi and Macchi, op. cit. (2002), pp.268, 270. Federico and Livio Macchi, ‘Luigi Lodigiani, maestro di bottega di primo Ottocento’ in Charta 72 (September–October 2004), pp.24–27; Macchi, op. cit. (2010).
16. Paul Culot, Jean-Claude Bozerian: un moment de l’ornement dans la reliure en France (Brussels 1979), roulette 9.
17. Paul Culot, Relieurs et reliures décorées en France aux époques Directoire et Empire: cinquante ateliers en quelque deux cents reliures conservées à la Bibliotheca Wittockiana (Brussels 2000), no. 145. Compare Macchi, op. cit. (2010), p.171 scheda 29; and for tools used in decorating the spine, p.169 scheda 18, p.176 scheda 19.
18. Seymour de Ricci, British and miscellaneous signed bindings in the Mortimer L. Schiff collection (New York 1935), pp.156–157, no. 75 (same ticket, but printed in black on pink paper); sold by Sotheby’s, ‘Catalogue of the third and final portion of the famous library formed by the late Mortimer L. Schiff’, London, 6–9 December 1938, lot 1496 (£5 5s, to Lardanchet). A copy of the 1813 volume using the same armorial block, but without Lodigiani’s ticket, was offered by Librairie Laurent Coulet, ‘Catalogue 39’, Paris 2008, item 57 (€9500). It is reproduced by Macchi, op. cit. (2010), p.167 fig. 2 (‘mercato antiquario’).
19. A copy of the 1809 volume was in the Leuchtenberg sale of 1928 (see note 4 above), lot 81: ‘prachtvoller roter langenarbter Maroquinbd. d.Z. Deckel, Steh- u. Innenkantenbordüre, überaus reiche ornamentale Ruckenvergoldung’ (i.e., without arms?).
20. The Getty’s group comprises 1813–1814, 1817–1822, 1825, 1827–1837, 1840, standing at N332.I83 M5.
21. In the Braidense are the Discorsi for 1814–1840, standing at ATTI.ACC. 0001.
22. Bollettino novità, 5’ bimestre 2002, no. 478.
23. Stefano Barelli, Gli opuscoli in prosa della Biblioteca Salita dei Frati di Lugano: 1538–1850: inventario e studio critico (Bellinzona 1998), pp.211 no. 1188 (cf. nos. 1185–1193: editions 1809–1817).
24. Biblioteca Ambrogio Binda della Famiglia meneghina: Catalogo, compiled by Lamberto Diotallevi (Milan 1955), p.28 no. 160.