Beschreibung:

JUSTINIANO, Laurenzo (fl.1381-1456). Dottrina della vita monastica . [Venice: Bernardinus Benalius (for Paul Fridenperger and Lazarus de Soardis?)], 20 October 1494. Chancery 4° (205 x 144mm). Collation: a-n 8 o 1 0 (a1r title and woodcut, a1v tabula, a2r woodcut, a3r text, o9v colophon, o10r blank, o10v woodcut). 114 leaves. 35 lines. Type: Benali 13:130G, 85G. 3 full-page woodcuts, woodcut initials from several sets. (Occasional light spotting.) Modern green straight-grained morocco. Provenance : Isto libro la sanctita ubidientia la concisso a suor. Amphetitia (16th-century inscription). FIRST EDITION. The fine portrait of the author which opens the book is one of the rare examples of a 15th-century woodcut known to be based on a definite painting. Gentile Bellini had painted a portrait of Giustiniani, patriarch of Venice, in 1466 (it now hangs in the Accademia at Venice), and this woodcut is a copy in reverse. The woodcut shows some modification from Gentile's painting, and Hind suggested that Gentile may himself have provided the new design for the anonymous woodcutter (Hind II, 497). The author portrait is joined by two other woodcuts. Their position on the first and last pages essentially forms the unusual feature of decorative wrappers. This is typical of a small group of devotional tracts printed at Venice in 1493-94, all of which are unsigned but which were printed with a Benalius type. In addition, Benalius was granted a privilege to print an edition of Giustiniano on 15 February 1493/4,. Soardus was granted a similar privilege on the same day, and presumably acted as publisher of the book (Fulin 20 and 21). A LARGE COPY. With the letterpress title above the first woodcut, as in Hain and Essling, but not in the British Library copy. HCR 9477; BMC V, 378 (IA.22438); Goff J-500; Essling 757; Sander 3718; IGI 5806; Schäfer 199.