Twenty bindings are here tentatively associated with this Paduan workshop. They contain twenty-nine books dated between 1487 and 1524; twenty-four are Venetian imprints (the others were printed at Milan, Parma, and Naples). The university at Padua was a centre for the study of Aristotle and nearby Venice an important centre for the publication of Aristotle’s works and commentaries, so it is no surprise that ten of the books are commentaries on Aristotle: two on the Analytica posteriora (nos. 1; 14 in List below), seven on the Metaphysica (nos. 2/1-2; 6/1-2; 9/1, 3; 12), and one on De anima and De caelo et mundo (no. 9/2). Several commentators had taught at Padua; some of the editors were Paduan professors working for Venetian printers.5 Five other volumes are law textbooks (nos. 3, 16-19) and three are medical books (nos. 4-5, 8). Four bindings cover works of classical authors: Lactantius (no. 10), Titus Livius (no. 11), Ovidius (no. 13/1-3), and Valerius Maximus (no. 20); and the remaining three contain works by contemporary writers: a posthumous edition of the orations of Agostino Dati (no. 7), Marcantonio Sabellico’s history of Venice in Italian (no. 15/1), and the allegorical poem in imitation of Dante written about 1400 by the Dominican Federico Frezzi (no. 15/2).
Fifteen of the twenty volumes (excepting nos. 4, 10-11, 13, 20) display either an ink drawing of the Pillone (Piloni) family arms, or the remarkable painted decoration which Cesare Vecellio added in the 1580s to the fore-edges of some 170 volumes kept at the family’s Villa di Casteldardo di Trichiana (Belluno).6 The foundations of this library were laid by Antonio Pillone (1462-1533). As Antonio is not known to have inscribed his name in any of the books, it is uncertain which were acquired by him, and which were bought by his eldest son, Odorico (1503-1594). Hobson divided the books between them by their subject, presuming that Antonio was interested in the classics, and collected from about 1490 to 1510, and Odorico in books on philosophy and medicine.7 The family library was greatly enlarged in the 1550s, when Odorico acquired the collection of his brother-in-law, Bonaccorso Grino (d. 1553). It was Odorico - or possibly his son, Giorgio (1539-1611) - who commissioned Vecellio (1521-1601) to decorate the books.8
Details from nos. 9 - 10 - 13 - 16 - 17
The most distinctive of the binder’s tools is the medallion stamp of a helmeted warrior, observed on eight of the twenty bindings (nos. 4, 9-11, 13, 16-17, 20). G.D. Hobson interpreted the inscription “d also” as “an abbreviation for Divino Alessandro”.9 In 1958, Anthony Hobson demurred: “one is tempted to suppose that this stamp is taken from a medal of Alfonso of Aragon, King of Naples - but no such medal is known to exist”.10 By 1989, he had embraced his father’s suggestion, and, after failing to identify a direct metallic prototype - a coin, or a medal - proposed that this image of the Alexander the Great as a god might be derived from a (lost) cameo of Minerva belonging to Lorenzo de’ Medici, which Janus Lascaris had adapted (transforming the goddess into a conqueror by adding a helmet and adding Alexander’s name in Greek letters) and used on the bindings of presentation copies of the 1494 Planudean Anthology.11
The stamp used on the Paduan bindings is in no sense a copy of the Medici gem or of the plaquette used for the Anthologia Graeca bindings. The sculptural embellishments of the helmet and cuirass decorated with the gorgoneion are lacking, and the Paduan portrait could not be identified as Alexander without its label. Nor does the stamp seem to be related to a group of Florentine, late 15C, oval or circular plaquettes of Alexander the Great, some lettered “Alisandro” or “Alix”, on which the helmet is invariably ornamented with a lapith and centaur.12 Most likely, the die was made by a local ottonaio, or brass-worker, working from a generic model of a helmeted warrior. The design recalls medals struck at Padua by Giovanni da Cavino, whose production began about 1520.
Two of the eight bindings decorated by the d also stamp cover incunables (1487, 1490) and the rest books printed in the years 1516-1524. It is probable that all eight bindings were executed during the 1520s. The earlier of the two incunables (no. 4) and a Sammelband of three books, the latest of which was printed 12 April 1523 (no. 9), have the same, highly unusual design: their full-leather covers are divided by quadruple blind fillets that cross over each other, forming 24 equal squares, with an impression of the Alexander stamp in each square, giving the appearance of a tray in a coin cabinet. No other tools are used in their decoration. The binding on the other incunable (no. 10) has a border formed by repetitions of a rectangular ropework tool. While numerous volumes in the Pillone library are decorated with related tools, associated by Hobson with a shop designated “Belluno Bindery B”,13 the tool used on no. 10 is a distinctive variant, also found on a Sammelband of three works of Ovid, the latest dated 4 January 1516 (no. 13). Both volumes are full-leather. The d also stamp was used, sparingly, on the two half-leather bindings covering Soccini’s works (4 impressions on each cover), printed in 1524 (nos. 16-17), and on a Valerius Maximus (4 impressions on each cover) printed in 1523 (no. 20). A single impression of the stamp is centred on the full-leather cover of the Livius (no. 11).
Pillone armorial insignia drawn on inside upper cover of no. 8 (Fasciato d’argento e di nero; alla banda d’ermellino attraversante sul tutto)
Odorico Pillone is recorded as a student in Padua in 1527 (graduated in civil law, 25 June 1527).14 Five legal textbooks in half-leather bindings (nos. 3, 16-19), decorated to the same pattern, albeit two with the medallion portrait stamp, and two with an arabesque lozenge, may be early purchases of Odarico. The Pillone family arms have been artlessly drawn on their upper covers, with an abbreviated title in Gothic script above, suggesting the organisation of the library before Vecellio’s intervention, and the shelving of the books with fore-edges into the room. The Pillone arms are drawn on the inside of the upper cover of the herbal (no. 8). This volume contains an effaced inscription dated 1534 naming the nobleman Antonio Doglioni of Belluno, father of Giovanni, who graduated at Parma in 1531.15
1. Nos. 4, 9, and 16 in the List below were credited to Verona by Tammaro De Marinis; that assignment was endorsed by Hobson in his entry for no. 17 in the sale catalogue of the J.R. Abbey collection (Sotheby’s, 19-21 June 1967, lot 2088), and by Bernard Breslauer when offering nos. 19-19 (Martin Breslauer, Catalogue One hundred and one, London 1970, item 234). A Paduan origin of the bindings was argued in Hobson’s Humanists and bookbinders: the origins and diffusion of the humanistic bookbinding 1459-1559 (Cambridge 1989), p.125; it was endorsed by Mirjam Foot for no. 19 (The Henry Davis gift: a collection of bookbindings, volume 3: A catalogue of south-European bindings, London 2010, no. 274).
2. Anthony Hobson, “The Pillone Library” in The Book Collector 7 (1958), pp.39-37 (p.37).
3. Hobson, op. cit. 1989, p.125.
4. Full-leather bindings: nos. 4, 9-13 in List below; all others are half-leather. Printed waste used as endleaves is reported in nos. 5, 7, 9, 12, 16-19 (nature of the endleaves in the other volumes has yet to be ascertained).
5. For example, 2/2: the author held the chair of metaphysics at Padua until 1511; edited by Joannes Antonius Patavinus, OFM, a disciple of the author, from 1509 Capellanus and Auditor of Cardinal Domenico Grimani. 9/1: edited by Marcantonio Zimara, professor of natural philosophy at Padua (1501-1509). 9/2: edited by Jacopo Filippo Pellenegra, a student at Padua of Nicoletto Vernia, then briefly professor there of medicine and natural sciences (1500-1501). 11: the author had been a student of Nicoletto Vernia, and was professor at Padua 1495-1499.
6. A shield with the Pillone arms is drawn inside a leafy cartouche on the upper cover of nos. 3, 16-19, on the front inside board of no. 8, and on an endpaper in no. 15; none of these books has fore-edge decoration. Vecellio’s painted decoration appears on nos. 1-2, 5-9, 12, 14-15.
7. Hobson, op. cit. 1958, p.37.
8. The ordinary books appear to have been widely dispersed ca 1874-1875 by the Venetian antique dealer Paolo Maresio Bazolle, but those decorated by Vecellio were mostly kept en bloc. Andrea Tessier, who published an account of the library (Di Cesare Vecellio e de'suoi dipinti e disegni in una collezione di libri dei secoli XV e XVI, Venice 1875, link), owned at least one volume with painted fore-edge (Lodovico Dolce, Le dignita de’ console e de’ gl’ Imperadori e I fatti de Romani, Venice: Gabriele Giolito De Ferrari, 1561; sold by Jacques Rosenthal, Katalog eines grossen Theils der Bibliotheken des verstorbenen Cavaliere Andrea Tessier und des Marchese de ***, Munich, 21-23 May 1900, lot 557). Hobson (op. cit. 1958, p. 30) cites a copy of Suetonius, Vitae XII Caesarum (Bologna: Printer of the Suetonius Vitae ca 1475-1477) in William Morris’s library (Sotheby Wilkinson & Hodge, London, 5-10 December 1898, lot 1075; cf. W.S. & S.H. Peterson, The Library of William Morris: A Catalogue, online [link]). Recent literature on the Pillone library includes Giovanni Grazioli, “La dispersa biblioteca dei conti Piloni di Belluno. Notizie storiche e traversie di un capolavoro del Rinascimento” in Biblioteche Oggi, January-February 1999, pp.20-26 [link]. Giovanni C.F. Villa, “Tra connoisseurship e bibliografia: il percorso di Cesare Vecellio” in Cesare Vecellio 1521 c.-1601 edited by Tiziana Conte (Belluno 2001), pp.23-34; G. Grazioli, “La Biblioteca Piloni” idem, pp.87-94; Francesca Bellencin, “La decorazione pittorica della Biblioteca Piloni” idem, pp.95-123. Jeannine Guérin Dalle Mese, “Curiosità e meraviglie in villa nel Cinquecento: lo studio di Odorico Piloni a Casteldardo” in Il bello, l'utile, lo strano nelle antiche dimore venete: atti del convegno, Castello di Lusa, Villabruna di Feltre, 9-11 settembre 2005 (Villabruna [Belluno] 2007), pp.177-225. Antonio Castronuovo, “I libri decorati di Odorico Piloni. A Belluno quattro pezzi di una singolare collezione” in La Biblioteca di via Senato 12 (October 2020), pp.18-25 [link].
9. In the sale catalogue for the Mensing collection, by Sotheby & Co., London, 15-17 December 1936, lot 537 (no. 17 in List below).
10. Hobson, op. cit. 1958, p.33.
11. Hobson, op. cit. 1989, p.125. Cf. Claudia Daniotti, Reinventing Alexander: myth, legend, history in Renaissance Italian art (Turnhout 2022), pp.178-180; Brian Madigan, Andrea Fulvio’s Illustrium imagines and the beginnings of Classical Archaeology (Leiden 2022), pp.27-39.
12. See Francesco Rossi, La Collezione Mario Scaglia: Placchette (Bergamo 2011), I, pp.63-64.
13. Hobson, op. cit. 1958, p.32 & Pl. 1. See Berès, op. cit. 1958, Pls. [1-2].
14. Elda Martellozzo Forin, Acta graduum academicorum Gymnasii Patavini: ab anno 1526 ad annum 1537 (Padua 1970), p.57 nos. 1327, 1329.
15. Forin, op. cit., p.193.
(1) Aegidius (Columna) Romanus, Excellentissimi artiu[m] [et] sacre theologie doctoris d[omi]ni Egidii Romani Archip[re]ulis biturice[n]is ordinis heremitar[um] s[an]c[t]i Augustini i[n] libros posterio[rum] Arist[otelis] expositio (Venice: Boneto Locatelli, for Ottaviano Scoto, 10 May 1488)
binding
“Ais de bois à demi-recouverts de maroquin brun, décor à froid disposé verticalement de trois compartiments de rinceaux et feuillage enfermant un motif torsadé vermiculé, titre calligraphié en hautes lettres noires sur l’ais de bois du premier plat, dos à trois nerfs orné à froid de larges filets obliques croisés et de petits motifs, quatre fermoirs: une partie de l’ais de bois du second plat refaite. - Fers: 27 et 30” (Berès)
provenance
● Antonio Pillone (1462-1533), or his son, Odorico Pillone (1503-1594); by family descent
● Paolo Maresio Bazolle (fl. 1874)
● Sir Thomas Brooke, 1st Bt (1830-1908), engraved armorial exlibris
● Humphrey Brooke (1914-1988)
● Alan Keen Ltd, London; their catalogue The Venetian library collected at the close of the XVI century by Doctor Odorico Pillone and the sides and edges painted by Cesare Vecellio (London [1947]), item 9
● Pierre Berès, Paris, commemorative exlibris; their catalogue (hors-série) Bibliothèque Pillone (Paris [1957]), item 67 (“Reliure semblable à celle du Socini de 1523 de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Rés. F. 729) aux les armoiries des Pillone”)
literature
Ellis, op. cit., II, p.666 no. 9 [link]
(2) Antonius Andreae, Quaestiones super XII libros Metaphysicae Aristotelis (Venice: Giovanni De Gregori & Gregorio De Gregori 15 October 1495), bound with Antonio Trombetta, Opus doctrinae Scoticae in Thomistas (Venice: Girolamo Paganini, 1493)
binding
“Ais de bois à demi-recouverts de maroquin noir, décor à froid disposé verticalement de quatre compartiments délimités par des bordures torsadées vermiculées et enfermant un motif à quatre éléments, titre calligraphié en hautes lettres noires sur l’ais de bois du premier plat, dos à trois nerfs orné à froid de larges filets obliques croisés, restes de quatre fermoirs. - Fer: 30” (Berès)
provenance
● Antonio Pillone (1462-1533), or his son, Odorico Pillone (1503-1594); by family descent
● Paolo Maresio Bazolle (fl. 1874)
● Sir Thomas Brooke, 1st Bt (1830-1908), engraved armorial exlibris
● Humphrey Brooke (1914-1988)
● Alan Keen Ltd, London; their catalogue The Venetian library collected at the close of the XVI century by Doctor Odorico Pillone and the sides and edges painted by Cesare Vecellio (London [1947]), item 13
● Pierre Berès, Paris, commemorative exlibris; their catalogue (hors-série) Bibliothèque Pillone (Paris [1957]), item 64 (“Reliure semblable par le style et par l’inscription du premier plat à celle du Socini de 1523 de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Rés. F. 729), qui porte les armoiries des Pillone.”)
literature
Ellis, op. cit., II, p.667 no. 13 [link]
(3) Bartolus de Saxoferrato, [Super prima parte Digesti novi cum additionibus Alexandri Tartagni; Repetitio legis: Caesar De publicanis] (Venice: Andrea I Torresano, 24 July 1493)
Image courtesy of Federico Macchi
binding
“Leg. in assi con dorso di cuoio dec. a secco: interlazzi, rosette a 8 lobi e crocette. Sopra l’asse anteriore si vede disegnato uno stemma, di mano contemporanea o dei primi del sec. XVI. Taglio grezzo.” (De Marinis)
provenance
● Antonio Pillone (1462-1533), or his son, Odorico Pillone (1503-1594); by family descent
● Gerolamo Gaslini (1877-1964), his donation in 1944 to
● Genoa, Biblioteca Universitaria, Gaslini 112
literature
Tammaro De Marinis, La Legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence 1960), no. 2024bis
Mostra di legature dei secoli XV-XIX (Genoa 1975), no. 14 (“Legatura veneziana su assi; piatti parzialmente ricoperti in pelle marrone impressa a secco con rabeschi, interlazzi, crocette e rondelle. Sulla parte lignea del piatto anteriore, stemma disegnato e scritta recante nome dell’autore e titolo dell’opera abbreviati; quattro fermagli in pelle e metallo sbalzato; dorso a quattro nervi.” [link])
Donatella Benazzi, Gli incunaboli ‘G. Gaslini’ della Biblioteca universitaria di Genova: catalogo (Rome 1993), p.73
(4) Articella, [Articella seu Opus artis medicinae] (Venice: Battista Torti, 20 August 1487)
Image courtesy of Federico Macchi
binding
Brown goatskin over pasteboards, tooled in blind, to a panel design, with ivy leaves in the inner corners, the border filled with curly leaf branch tools, in the centres a medallion head of a warrior lettered ‘d. also’, above and below it a stylised flower surrounded by four of the same and by four ivy leaf tools
provenance
● Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, D 007 004 (opac Legatura coeva in piena pelle, con impressioni e decori a secco sui piatti e sul dorso [link])
(12) Agostino Nifo, Euthychi Augustini Nyphi philothei Suessani Metaphysicarum disputationum dilucidarium (Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, 1 September 1511)