Beschreibung:

Jandun, Jean de. Perspicacissimi speculatoris ac summi paripathetici Iohannis de Ianduno Questiones in duodecim libros metaphysice ad intentionem Aristotelis et magni commentatoris Auerrois subtilissime disputate. Solertis artium doctoris Marciantonij Zimara annotationes locorum in quibus Iohannes in his questionibus a via commentatoris Auerrois aperte deuiauit. Eiusdem questio de indiuidatione nature ad mentem commentatoris et Aristotelis subtiliter examinata. Venice: Boneto Locatello for Heirs of Ottaviano I Scoto, 8 March 1505. Bound with:
Jean de Jandun, Questiones Joannis Jandoni de celo et mundo. Jacobus Philippus de Pellibus nigris Troianus artium et medicine doctor, moralemque philosophiam Patauij ordinarie legens. Ad librum nuper a Nicoleto Vernia Theatino emendatum. Venice: Heirs of Ottaviano I Scoto, 24 September 1519. Bound with:
Antonio Andrés, Questiones Antonij Andree super XII libros metaphysice nouissime diligenti examine recognite: ac nouis additionibus textuum alijsque quampluribus postillis in margine decorate. Venice: Heirs of Ottaviano I Scoto, 12 April 1523
A volume containing three medieval commentaries on Aristotle’s metaphysics and cosmology, one edited by Marcantonio Zimara, professor of natural philosophy at Padua (1501–1509); another by Jacopo Filippo Pellenegra, a student at Padua of Nicoletto Vernia, then briefly professor there of medicine and natural sciences (1500–1501); and the third by Lucas de Subereto of Pisa—the trio contained in one of the most important and finest bindings of the Pillone library.
The first owner of this copy may have been Odorico Pillone (1503–1594), the eldest son of Antonio Pillone (1464–1533), recorded as a student in Padua in 1527 (graduated in civil law, 25 June 1527). Three other schoolbooks bound in the same, anonymous shop belonged to Odorico: two by the jurist Bartolomeo Soccini, printed at Venice in 1523–1524 (nos. 5–6 in the List below), and one by Agostino Nifo, printed at Naples in 1511. No expense was lavished on their bindings: two are half-bound (wooden boards with a leather backstrip), with the Pillone family arms artlessly painted on their upper covers; all four have waste-sheets from other publications used as endleaves and pastedowns. Hobson supposed that the shop was situated in Padua, specialized in selling medical books and works of Aristotelian philosophy, and catered to impecunious students; the workshop has now been given the name The Alexander's Head Shop (A. Hobson, Decorated Bookbindings in Renaissance Italy, edited by Edward Potten and Mirjam Foot, forthcoming 2025).
The Nifo and the present volume were bound in full-leather, their covers divided by quadruple blind fillets that cross over each other, forming equal squares (32 and 24 respectively). Each compartment of the Nifo is filled by a large fleur-de-lys. A medallion head of Alexander the Great was used on the Janduno, giving the appearance of a tray in a coin cabinet. The same medallion was used, sparingly, on the two half-leather bindings covering Soccini’s works (4 impressions on each cover), and on four bindings commissioned by other customers. These are a 1487 medical miscellany, a folio, in full leather, with the stamp filling a grid of 24 squares, as on the Janduno; a recueil of works by Ovid, printed 1508–1516, in full leather (2 impressions on each cover); the 1490 Lactantius, in full leather (2 impressions on each cover); and a 1523 Valerius Maximus (4 impressions on each cover).
The circular stamp depicts a helmeted warrior facing right, lettered around * D * ALSO * (an abbreviation, perhaps, of “Divino Alessandro”), and encircled by a wreath. Hobson could identify no direct prototype—neither a coin, nor a medal—and surmised that the image might be derived from a (lost) cameo of Minerva belonging to Lorenzo de’ Medici, which the Greek scholar Janus Lascaris had adapted (transforming the goddess into a conqueror by adding a helmet and legend ἈΛΈΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ) and used on presentation copies of the 1494 Planudean Anthology (Humanists and Bookbinders, pp. 100–103, 125, and Census 12a).
About 1580, Odorico commissioned a local artist, Cesare Vecellio (1521–1601), then engaged in painting a series of portraits of Pillone family members, to decorate some 170 books accumulated in the family library at Villa Castelardo di Trichiana, near Belluno. Many (if not all) the books in his library were shelved with their backs to the wall and fore-edges exposed. In the past, some fore-edges had been lettered with the titles of the volumes, and Vecellio was obliged to work his decoration around this lettering; if no lettering was present, he wrote the author’s name (often abbreviated) horizontally across the lower fore-edge, or vertically from the top to the bottom of the fore-edge. Vecellio usually contented himself with a single, boldly colored figure, such as the author, in the act of writing, or composed a scene suggestive of the contents. He apparently worked with specific instructions provided by Odorico, some of which have survived as notes on the inside upper cover. Twenty-one volumes, bound entirely in vellum, received designs in pen and ink on their covers.
Bindings Displaying the * D * ALSO * Stamp 
(1) Articella, [Articella seu Opus artis medicinae] (Venice: Battista Torti, 20 August 1487). Verona, Biblioteca civica, Inc. 203.De Marinis, op. cit., no. 2529 & Pl. 424; Kyriss, op. cit., p.43 no.3.
(2) Jean de Jandun, Questiones in duodecim libros metaphysice ad intentionem Aristotelis et magni commentatoris Auerrois subtilissime disputate (Venice: Boneto Locatello for Heirs of Ottaviano I Scoto, 1505), bound with: Jean de Jandun, Questiones Joannis Jandoni de celo et mundo (Venice: Heirs of Ottaviano I Scoto, 1519), bound with: Antonio Andrés, Questiones Antonij Andree super XII libros metaphysice nouissime diligenti examine recognite (Venice: Heirs of Ottaviano I Scoto, 1523). Odorico Pillone (1503–1594). The volume offered here.
(3) Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, [Opera] (Venice: Theodorus de Ragazonibus, 21 April 1490. Wolf Dietrich Raitenau, Archbishop of Salzburg (1592) — Franciscan convent, Salzburg — Ernst Kyriss (1962) — Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Inc. fol. 9815.Kyriss p.42 no. 1 & Pl. 6.
(4) Publius Ovidius Naso, Publii Ouidii Nasonis Libri de Ponto cum luculentissimis commentariis reuerendissimi domini Bartholomei Merulae ([Parma]: Ottaviano Saladi, 1508), bound with: Publius Ovidius Naso, P. Ouidii Nasonis Libri de tristibus cum luculentissimis commentariis reuerendissimi domini Bartholomei Merulae (Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 25 June 1511), bound with: Publius Ovidius Naso, P. Ovidii Nasonis Libri De Arte Amandi 7 De Remedio Amoris (Venice: iovanni Tacuino, 4 January 1516). Salzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, F II 482.
(5) Bartolomeo Soccini, Bartholomei Socini Commentaria labore maximo emendata, et plurima hic nuper sunt addita (Venice: Battista Torti, 4 March 1524). Odorico Pillone (1503–1594, family arms painted on upper cover) — Labitte, Paris — Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés F-729 (1). Bulletin mensuel des publications etrangeres recues par le Department de Imprimes de la Bibliotheque Nationale, December 1881, no. 4061.
(6) Bartolomeo Soccini, Repertorium (Venice: Battista Torti, 1523). Odorico Pillone (1503–1594; family arms painted on upper cover) — Anton W.M. Mensing (1866-1936); Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of the very valuable and important library formed by the late Mr. Ant. W.M. Mensing of Amsterdam, London, 15-17 December 1936, lot 537 — Francis Edwards, London - bought in sale (£10) — John Roland Abbey (1894-1969); Sotheby & Co., Catalogue of the celebrated library the property of Major J.R. Abbey, Part III, London, 19-21 June 1967, lot 2088 — Georges Heilbrun, Paris - bought in sale (£540) — Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Rés-F-729 (2). Acquired in 1981; Revue de la Bibliothèque nationale, 1982, no. 5, p. 44.
(7) Valerius Maximus, Valerius Maximus nouiter recognitus cum commentario historico videlicet ac literato Oliuerii Arzignanensis (Venice: Guglielmo da Fontaneto, 6 February 1523) — Budapest, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Ant. 707.Hobson, op. cit., p.125; Marianne Rozsondai, “Reneszánsz plakett- és kámeás kötések” in Történelem-kép: szemelvények múlt és művészet kapcsolatából Magyarországon (Budapest 2000), pp.253-254 no. III-27 (illustrated), 263 [this binding features a repeated clamshell tool not observed elsewhere].
3 works in one volume, folio (310 x 214 mm). (I) Roman type, 64 lines plus headline in double columns. collation: A–M8 N10 O–R8 S–Z6 AA6: 180 leaves, foliated (1) 2–180. White-on-black woodcut initials, woodcut printer's device on AA6r. (II) Roman type, 64 lines plus headline in double columns. collation: aa–ee6: 30 leaves. Woodcut criblé initials, woodcut printer's device on ee6r. (III) Roman type, 64 lines plus headline in double columns. collation: a–i6 k4: 58 leaves. Woodcut criblé initials, woodcut printer's device on k4r. (First title-page a little stained and very slightly frayed at top margin, very tiny marginal wormholes in final two leaves.)
binding: Paduan brown goatskin over printed waste pasteboard (322 x 225 mm), ca. 1525, covers divided by quadruple blind fillets in a grid pattern, in each compartment a circular stamp of a helmeted Alexander the Great, lettered * D * ALSO *, in each square, very fine calligraphic vellum title-label in antiqua capitals on the upper cover, remains of 4 pairs of green silk ties. endpapers: At front, a waste sheet from a copy of the third text in this volume (bifolium a3–a4); at back, waste sheets from Ottaviano Scoto’s 1519 edition of Thomas Aquinas, Metaphysica Aris. duplicis translationis cum expositione (b✠, bb10). fore-edge: Painted by Cesare Vecellio with a portrait of a teacher, likely Janduno, standing, with pen, at a lectern, lettered at top: IO. IAN. The top and bottom edges painted in a marbled pattern. (Extremities worn with some minor losses, chips, and scratches, a few wormholes, but completely unrestored.)
provenance: Odorico Pillone, by descent to — Giorgio Pillone (1539–1611) — Paolo Maresio Bazolle (fl. 1874) — Sir Thomas Brooke, 1st Bt (1830–1908; engraved armorial exlibris) — Humphrey Brooke (1914–1988; consigned to Alan Keen Ltd., London, The Venetian Library Collected at the Close of the XVI Century by Doctor Odorico Pillone and the Sides and Edges Painted by Cesare Vecellio [1947], item 17) — Pierre Berès, Paris (commemorative exlibris [no. 70]; Bibliothèque Pillone [catalogue, hors série, 1957], item 70) — Jaime Ortiz-Patiño (1930–2013; Sotheby's, New York, 21 April 1998, lot 140), purchased by — unidentified owner ($134,400) — Jonathan H. Kagan. acquisition: Purchased from Stéphane Clavreuil Rare Books, London, 2017. 
references: (I) Edit16 32837; USTC 762264; Adams J-61; (II) Edit16 51663; USTC 836892; (III) Edit16 1721; USTC 809286; for the binding, see Ellis, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Printed Books Collected by Thomas Brooke and preserved at Armitage Bridge House, near Huddersfield (London, 1891), II, p. 667, no. 17; A. Hobson, “The Pillone Library,” in The Book Collector 7 (1958), pp. 29–37 (p. 33 & Pl. 3); De Marinis, La Legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence, 1960), no. 2530 & Pl. 423; Kyriss, “Italienische Einbände der Spätgotik im Ausland,” in Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore dal Tammaro De Marinis (Verona, 1964), pp. 35–44 (p. 43, no. 4); A. Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders:The Origins and Diffusion of the Humanistic Bookbinding 1459–1559 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 125 & Fig. 100; Cunnally, Kagan & Scher, Numismatics in the Age of Grolier (New York, 2001), pp. 11–12.