Beschreibung:

AUGUSTINUS, Aurelius (Saint, 354-430). De civitate Dei . Venice: Nicolaus Jenson, 2 October 1475. Chancery 2° (280 x 190mm). Collation: [1-2 8 3-31 1 0 ] (1/1 blank, 1/2r table of rubrics, 2/8 blank, 3/1r text, 31/9-10 blank). 304 (of 306, without final two blank) leaves. 46 lines and headlines, double column. Type: 2:84G, 4:110R. 11-line illuminated initial opening the text, forming part of an architectural border in purple pen-and-ink with blue wash and green and pink highlights, swashes in upper margin and an armorial between mermaids in lower margin, the work of the MASTER OF THE RIMINI OVID, 2- to 8-line initials over guide-letters in alternating red or blue, quire guards. (Occasional light spotting.) Early 19th-century half vellum, leather spine labels (bookplate and stamp removed from front cover). Provenance : Lampugnani family, Milan (illuminated armorial); Thomas R. Allan (ca.1800-1884, purchased from Favai, Venice, for £2, Allan Library stamps; his library bequeathed to London, Methodist Church, which in 1920 became part of); The London Library (stamps, cancelled); Pierre Berès (label). The present copy is a fine example of the work of the Master of the Rimini Ovid, one of more than 20 anonymous artists working in Venice who decorated printed books with painted miniatures. The Master of the Rimini Ovid also designed woodcuts for Venetian printed books, most notably for the first illustrated edition of Petrarch's Triumphs (1488), thus further effecting a change in the book arts from manuscript to print. The visual playfulness characteristic of the Master of the Rimini Ovid is present here: the initial drawn as if incised in stone, seemingly forming part of a fanciful column topped by a flaming chalice; the illusion of curling parchment around the edges of the text; the mermaids framing the armorial device. The artist worked for Nicolaus Jenson on a number of occasions, as here, most notably decorating a copy of his Breviarium Romanum (1478) for Pietro Barozzi, Bishop of Belluno. For a full discussion of work by this master, see Lilian Armstrong, "The Master of the Rimini Ovid, a Miniaturist and Woodcut Designer in Renaissance Venice", Print Quarterly X, 1993, pp.327-363, where this is no.3 in her list of attributable works. HC *2051; GW 2879; BMC V, 175 (IB. 19686); Goff A-1235.