Bindings decorated by a plaquette of Diana (Hobson 3)
The metal model was attributed by Bange and De Ricci to the workshop of Donatello, and dated to the end of the fifteenth century.2 Pope-Hennessey rejected that attribution, and dated it to around 1500.3 Warren supposed a date of ca 1460-1480 and drew attention to two variants, one of which has a blank exergue omitting the lower portion of the drapery, and the other has the drapery continuing to the edge of the plaquette. (Just one of the eight bindings has the blank exergue, Hobson 3d, a binding executed in Milan about 1510 for Jean Grolier.) Hobson’s speculation that the plaquette might have been copied from an antique intaglio is not endorsed by Warren.4 Stanko Kokole suggested that this plaquette may be among those produced in Rome in the foundry of Cardinal Pietro Barbo (1417-1471), elected in 1464 to succeed Pope Pius II.5
1. A. Hobson, Humanists and bookbinders: the origins and diffusion of the humanistic bookbinding 1459-1559, with a census of historiated plaquette and medallion bindings of the Renaissance (Cambridge 1989), p.216 nos. 3a-3g. No additional examples are described in Hobson’s two supplements: “Plaquette and medallion bindings: A supplement” in Bulletin du bibliophile (1994) pp.24-37; “Plaquette and medallion bindings: a second supplement” in For the love of the binding: Studies in bookbinding history presented to Mirjam Foot (London 2000), pp.67-79.
2. Ernst Friedrich Bange, Die italienischen Bronzen der Renaissance und das Barock (Berlin 1914-1922), no. 65 (Italy, end 15C). Seymour de Ricci, The Gustave Dreyfus Collection. Reliefs and plaquettes (Oxford 1931), p.41, no. 44 & Pl. 17 (as Florentine, 15C).
3. John W. Pope-Hennessy, Renaissance Bronzes from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Reliefs, plaquettes, statuettes, utensils and mortars (London 1965), p.77, no. 264, fig. 15.
4. Jeremy Warren, A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: Medieval and Renaissance sculpture, Volume 3: Plaquettes (Oxford 2014), pp.909-910 nos. 368-370 (p.910: “no convincing source has yet been identified and most scholars have chosen instead to see it as a fifteenth-century work in a classicising style.”). Michael Riddick, “Glyptics, Italian Plaquettes in France and their reproduction in enamel” in Renaissance Bronze (post, 7 November 2019), p.10 (“The plaquette is possibly a freehand invention after the antique, conceived during the last quarter of the 15th century and widely diffused”; the Ubertazzi example illustrated) [link].
5. Stanko Kokole, “The Silver Shrine of Saint Simeon in Zadar: Collecting ancient coins and casts after the antique in fifteenth-century Dalmatia” in Collecting Sculpture in Early Modern Europe, edited by Nicholas Penny & Eike D. Schmidt (Washington, DC 2008), pp.111-127 (pp.112,115 fig. 9, 122 n. 12) [link].
Left Detail fron no. 8 below
Centre National Gallery of Art, 1957.14.168 [link]
Right Ubertazzi Collection (Riddick)
list (in approximate chronological order of binding)
(1) Quintus Asconius Pedianus, Q. A. Pedianus. i[n] senatu co[n]tra. L. Pisonem (Venice: Johannes de Colonia and Johannes Manthen, between 2 June and 12 September 1477)
Lower cover (Julius Caesar, laureate, Hobson 13, on the upper cover)
provenance
● Rome, Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana, 50.F.8
literature
Tammaro De Marinis, La Legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence 1960), no. 1675 & Pl. 316
Anthony Hobson, Humanists and bookbinders: the origins and diffusion of the humanistic bookbinding 1459-1559, with a census of historiated plaquette and medallion bindings of the Renaissance (Cambridge 1989), p.216 no. 3a (as bound at Venice, ca 1480-1495)
(2) Pontificale Romanum (Rome: Stephan Plannck, 16 August 1497)
Upper cover
provenance
● Cologne, Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, A.D. bl. 469
literature
Ernst Kyriss, “Plaketten- und Kameen-Bände” in Jahrbuch der Einbandkunst 3-4 (1929-1930), pp.41-53 (pp.49-50 & Pl. 20) [link]
Hobson, op. cit., p.216 no. 3b (as bound at Florence, ca 1497)
(3) Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, Lucanus (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, April 1502), bound with Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Salustius (Florence: Filippo I Giunta, February 1503)
Both covers
provenance
● Charles Carmichael Lacaita (1853-1933)
● Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of valuable printed books, illuminated and other manuscripts, autograph letters, Persian and Indian miniatures, London, 20 July 1936, lot 129
● John Roland Abbey (1894-1969)
● Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of valuable printed books and fine bindings from the celebrated collection; the property of Major J.R. Abbey, London, 21-23 June 1965, lot 452
● Alan G. Thomas, London - bought in sale (£250)
● Jean Fürstenberg (1890-1982)
● Martin Breslauer Inc., New York; their Catalogue 104: Fine books in fine bindings from the fourteenth to the present century (New York [1981]), item 134 ($6000); Catalogue 107: Italy: Part II: Books printed 1501 to c. 1840 (New York [1984]) item 260 ($6000)
literature
Tammaro De Marinis, Die italienischen Renaissance-Einbände der Bibliothek Fürstenberg (Hamburg 1966), pp.164-165
Hobson, op. cit., p.216 no. 3c (as bound at Florence, 1505)
(4) Aulus Gellius, Auli Gelii Noctium Atticarum commentarii (Bologna: Benedetto Faelli, 1 February 1503)
“The plaquette (52 x 37 mm.), used twice on each cover, differs from the others noted here in having the exergue blank.” (Hobson)
provenance
● Jean Grolier de Servières, vicomte d’Aguisy (1489?-1565)
● Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipal, Rés. Rel. B21
literature
G.D. Hobson, “Weiland Dr Theodor Gottlieb und seine ‘Grolierstudien’” in Jahrbuch der Einbandkunst 3 (1931), pp.61-89 (p.65 no. 9 & Pl. 21 Fig. 1) [link]
De Marinis, op. cit., no. 2648 & Pls. 456-457
Jacques Guignard, “À propos d’un Grolier inédit. La date des reliures à plaquettes: Étienne ou Jean Grolier?” in Mélanges d’histoire du livre et des bibliothèques offerts à Monsieur Frantz Calot, conservateur en chef honoraire de la Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (Paris 1960), pp.191-216 (pp.211-214)
Hobson, op. cit., p.216 no. 3d (as bound at Milan 1510)
A. Hobson, Renaissance book collecting: Jean Grolier and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, their books and bindings (Cambridge 1999), p.13 & Fig. 4
(5) [detached cover - fragment of a binding sharing cornerpieces with De Marinis no. 610 & Pl. 106]
provenance
● Francis Douce (1757-1834)
● Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce scrapbook
literature
G.D. Hobson, op. cit., p.71 & Pl. 21 Fig. 2 [link]
Hobson, op. cit., p.216 no. 3e (as bound at Rome, ca 1515-1520)
(6) “Francisci Petrarcae Florentini Poetae excellentiss. Rhythmi incipiunt (Bartolomeo Sanvito, c. 1463-1464)]
Lower cover (Septimus Severus, Hobson 27b & Fig. 184, on the upper cover)
provenance
● Robert Hoe (1839-1909)
● Anderson Galleries, Catalogue of the library of Robert Hoe of New York. Part I : L-Z : illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, historical bindings, New York, 1-5 May 1911, lot 2170 (“contemporary Florentine binding in calf, gilt and blind-tooled sides, centre medallions with heads, gilt edges (the original sides inlaid)”)
● Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864-1958), printed label inscribed “no. 135”
● Charles Harold St John Hornby (1867-1946)
● John Roland Abbey (1894-1969)
● Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of valuable printed books, highly important medieval illuminations, London, 16-18 December 1946, lot 560
● London, Victoria & Albert Museum, National Art Library, KRP. c. 78 (L.101-1947) (opac Original covers inlaid in a modern binding; brown calf, blind tooled with traces of gilding, multiple frames of ornament with cameo profiles of Pompey on the upper cover and Diana on the lower [link])
literature
Carolyn Shipman, A catalogue of manuscripts forming a portion of the library of Robert Hoe (New York 1909), p.159 (“original Medicean binding of calfskin, ornamented with panels partly gold and partly blind-tooled, medallions of Petrarch and Laura stamped in the centre of the covers, edges gauffred and gilt”) [link]
Hobson, op. cit., p.216 no. 3f (bound at Rome, ca 1515-1525)
Albinia De la Mare, Bartolomeo Sanvito the life & work of a Renaissance scribe (Paris 2009), p.166 no. 30, pp.408-409
Rowan Watson, Western Illuminated Manuscripts. A Catalogue of works in the National Art Library from the eleventh to the early twentieth century, with a complete account of the George Reid Collection (London 2011), II, pp.548-557
(7) Zaccaria Ferreri, Zachariae Ferreri Vicent. pont. Gardien. Hymni noui ecclesiastici iuxta veram metri et Latinitatis normam (Rome: Ludovico degli Arrighi & Lautizio Perugino, 1525)
Both covers
provenance
● Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, RARI I.5 11 (opac Esemplare stampato su pergamena. - Legatura a placchetta eseguita a Roma nella prima metà del XVI sec. in marocchino scuro con impressioni in oro e a secco)
literature
De Marinis, op. cit., no. 473 & Pl. 88
Hobson, op. cit., p.216 no. 3g (as bound at Rome, ca 1523) [Hobson misread the date of the edition as 1523]
(8) Psalterion [Greek] (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, [not after 1 October 1498])
Both covers
provenance
● unidentified owner, inscription “Della Libr.a del Bibla. Del Con… de Ca…mba” crossed through
● unidentified owners, early Spanish ownership inscriptions crossed through
● Bernard Quaritch, London
● T. Kimball Brooker (purchased from the above, 2011) [Bibliotheca Brookeriana ID #0022; offered by Sotheby’s, Bibliotheca Brookeriana: A Renaissance Library, The Aldine Collection: A–C, New York, 12 October 2023, lot 196]
literature
Unpublished