Beschreibung:

Calepino, Ambrogio. Ambrosii Calepini Dictionarium. In quo restituendo atque exornando cum multa praestitimus, tum in extremo plurimarum dictionum seiunctam a libro appendicem impressimus, & novam, & utilissimam, ac pene necessariam. [Venice: heirs of Aldo Manuzio, 1552]
A reprint of the 1548 Aldine edition of Calepino’s dictionary, with new title-pages, and a new appendix of 62 leaves with its own title "Dictiones plurimae, quarum significatio perultilis ac necessaria est, undecunque conquisitae, et separatim hic impressae sunt".
In 1975, Anthony Hobson drew attention to a group of 11 Genoese bindings of the 1560s, all having on their covers an oval gilt stamp of a phoenix, not in relief (like a plaquette binding), but impressed by an engraved tool. The stamp on these bindings resembles the devices employed by the printer, Gabriele Giolito, whose shop in Venice was located "all’insegna della Fenice". Hobson could find however no evidence of a branch of the Giolito firm in Genoa, so he discarded the twin hypotheses that these were either Giolito’s personal copies, or "publisher’s bindings", bindings a publisher might place on books displayed in a shop. He surmised that the stamp was the impresa of the Milanese Accademia dei Fenici, known to have several Genoese members, and guessed that the books belonged to Giovanni Battista Oliva Grimaldi, Duca di Terranova (d. 1582). Hobson thought that Battista Grimaldi could have been inspired, or even guided, by his namesake, the owner of the "Apollo and Pegasus" bindings, when in 1560 he began to furnish the studiolo of his newly-built Palazzo della Meridiana.
In 1999, Hobson withdrew his suggestion that the phoenix device might indicate a member of the Accademia dei Fenici, while sustaining the Genoese origin of the bindings. He revived the possibility that they were made by or for a presumed Giolito branch in the city, and cited three more bindings having the same phoenix stamp on their covers. Our copy of Calepino’s two-volume dictionary is an addition to Hobson’s census, and brings the total number of known phoenix device bindings up to sixteen. Eight of them cover volumes of the 1550-1552 Aldine Cicero (see lot 349), four cover books printed at Basel between 1541-1555, and the remaining three are on Venetian imprints of 1544-1555, including one printed by Gabriele Giolito himself, his Orlando furioso of 1555.
Hobson designated the shop in which these phoenix device bindings were made the "Grimaldi Binder". Apart from the phoenix device bindings, Hobson identified six others decorated by tools belonging to the same kit. Their covers are tooled to a panel design in blind and gold, the latter interlaced, with gilt leaf tools set in the angles, like the phoenix device bindings; three have a vertical spine title (the titles are lettered horizontally on the phoenix device bindings). The paneling and tools resemble Roman bindings, and indeed De Marinis mistook them as such. Two are manuscripts, both with Genoese associations, and four are printed books: a volume containing three separately-printed works of Pico della Mirandola,
bound up in brown goatskin, with an oval stamp of Phaethon falling from his chariot and the motto "Nosce te ipsum" of an unidentified owner in centers; and three works printed at Rome in 1562 by Paolo Manuzio, each with the name of the owner, Annibale Minali (d. 1617), commendatore di San Giovanni di Prè in Genoa, lettered on the covers.
Phoenix Device Bindings (Non-Aldines):
(1)   Appianus, De bellis punicis liber de bellis syriacis liber de bellis parthicis liber de bellis mithridaticis liber de bellis civilibus libri V de bellis Gallicis liber ([Basel: Hieronymus Froben & Nikolaus Episcopius], 1554) ● Genoa, Biblioteca Universitaria, 2.G.VI.38 Mostra di legature dei secoli XV-XIX, Genova, Palazzo dell’Accademia, 9 gennaio-3 febbraio 1976 (Genoa [1975]), no. 64; Hobson, op. cit., 1999, p.127
(2)    Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, con la giunta di cinque canti d’un nuouo libro del medesimo (Venice: Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari et fratelli, 1555) ● William Horatio Crawford (1815-1888); Sotheby Wilkinson & Hodge, The Lakelands Library. Catalogue of the rare & valuable books, manuscripts & engravings, of the late W.H. Crawford, Esq. Lakelands, Co. Cork, London, 12-23 March 1891, lot 164 ● Ellis - bought in sale (£7 15s) ● Oxford, Taylor Institution, ARCH.8o.IT.1555(1) Fine bindings 2500-1700 from Oxford libraries (Oxford 1968), no. 18; Hobson, op. cit., 1999, p.127
(3-4) Ambrogio Calepino, Dictionarium. In quo restituendo atque exornando cum multa praesititimus (Venice: Heirs of Aldo I Manuzio, 1552) ● the two volumes here offered for sale
(5) Vittoria Colonna, Rime (Venice: Bartolomeo & Francesco Imperatore, 1544), bound with: Vittoria Colonna, Le rime spirituali (Venice: Comin da Trino, 1548) ● Franco Moroli, of Rome; Mostra storica della legatura artistica in Palazzo Pitti (Florence 1922), no. 241 ● Libreria antiquaria T. De Marinis & C., Florence; Ulrico Hoepli, Manoscritti, incunabuli, legature, libri figurati dei secoli XVI e XVIII: Terza parte della collezione De Marinis, Milan, 17-19 June 1926, lot 286 & Pl. 39 ● Tammaro De Marinis (1878-1969) ● Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Stamp.De.Marinis.208(int.1) Tammaro De Marinis, op. cit., no. 910 & Tav. 153; Hobson, op. cit., 1975, p.97 no. 2
(6) Homerus, Batrachomyomachia odysseae homeri libri XXIIII (Basel: Johann Oporinus, 1549) ● Arthur Lauria, Paris ● Martin Breslauer, Catalogue 102 (London 1972), item 55 ● Venice, Biblioteca Giustiniani Recanati Falck De Marinis, op. cit., no. 911; Hobson, op. cit., 1975, p.97; Giulia Bologna, Legature: dal codice al libro a stampa; l’arte della legatura attraverso i secoli (Milan 1998), p.93
(7) Homerus, De nympharum antro in odyssea homericae quaestiones homericarum quaestionum liber homerika zetemata poieseis omeru ampho ete ilias kai e odysseia, hypo te iakobu tu mikyllu kai ioacheimu kamerariou paraskeuastheisai. Opus utrumque homeri iliados et odysseae, diligenti opera Jacobi mycilli & Joachimi camerarii recognitum (Basel: Johannes Herwagen, 1541) ● Genoa, Biblioteca Universitaria, 3.CC.VIII.14 Mostra di legature, op. cit., no. 65; Hobson, op. cit., 1999, p.127
(8) Plutarchus, Ethica sive moralia opera, quae in hunc usque diem de Graecis in Latinum conversa (Basel: Michael Isengrin, 1555) ● Tammaro De Marinis (1878-1969) ● Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Stamp.De.Marinis.10 De Marinis, op. cit., no. 913; Hobson, op. cit., 1975, p.97 no. 3
Folio (335 x 225 mm). Italic type, text in two columns, 66 lines plus headline. collation: (vol. I): a-z8 aa-yy8 zz10 (zz10 blank); (vol. II): A-Z8 AA-XX8 YY10; (appendix): a-o4 p6: 732 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, and on title-page and final verso of appendix, woodcut historiated initials. (Marginal repairs, some browning and foxing, wormhole to lower margin of vol. I, scattered staining.)
binding: Genoese dark green morocco (ca. 1560), by the Grimaldi Binder (348 x 245 mm), single gilt fillet around sides, gilt rosette at corners, inner frame of gilt and blind fillets, with fleuron in corners, two intertwined gilt rectangles with fleuron at outer angles and a volute at corners, in center a gilt oval containing a phoenix rising from flames issuing from urn, and pecking at the sun, stubs from four pairs of ties, spine with four raised bands and five semi-raised bands, compartments undecorated, gilt horizontal two-line spine title in lower half of top compartment, gilt edges with a gauffered border of twin dots. (Restoration to joints and spine ends.)
provenance: Unidentified owner (supralibros of a phoenix) — Finarte, Libri, autografi e stampe, Rome, 20 June 2019, lot 27 — Meda Riquier Rare Books, London, their catalogue, 2020, pp. 34-37. references: UCLA 426; Edit16 8441; Renouard 153/2; Labarre, Bibliographie du Dictionarium d'Ambrogio Calepino (1502-1779), 83; Anthony Hobson, Apollo and Pegasus: an enquiry into the formation and dispersal of a Renaissance library (Amsterdam 1975), pp.97-100; Hobson, Renaissance book collecting (Cambridge 1999), p.127