Beschreibung:

Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano. Hoc in uolumine opera haec continentur. Parthenopei libri duo. De amore coniugali tres. De tumulis duo. Elegia de obitu filii. De eodem iambici. De diuinis laudibus. Hendecasyllaborum seu Baiarum libri duo. Sapphici. Eridani duo libri. Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, September 1505
A collection of love lyrics that Pontano (1426–1503) wrote before his marriage in 1461, edited by Pietro Summonte (1463–1526) from a manuscript incorporating the poet’s last revisions. It is the first volume in a series of eight issued from the press of Sigismund Mayr at Naples, a passionate editorial labor led by Summonte, who had succeeded Pontano as head of the Accademia Pontaniana, and sought to preserve his memory through the publication of his works.
This copy is one of three known in bindings specially decorated with a raised medallion portrait of Pontano on their covers. The portrait depicts him bald and bare-shouldered, with lettering around the circumference: IOANNES IOVIANVS PONTANVS. The image was taken from the obverse of a medal cast by Adriano Fiorentino (Adriano di Giovanni de’ Maestri), a sculptor and bronze founder who worked in Naples from about 1488 until 1495. Anthony Hobson attributed the three bindings, and two others with the same cameo portrait on Mayr editions of other works by Pontano—De numeris poeticis (1507) and De Sermone et de bello neapolitano (1509)—to a shadowy Neapolitan artisan, Masone di Maio, famed for his “lavorare in cuoio duro,” though in Hobson's forthcoming book (Decorated Bookbindings in Renaissance Italy, edited by Edward Potten and Mirjam Foot, forthcoming 2025) the name of Girolamo d'Ambrosio is suggested. The portrait, which styles Pontano like a classical author on an antique gem, the double-handed tablets beside it, resembling the tabulae ansatae used in antiquity to enclose epigraphs, and the narrow dimensions, achieved by sharply trimming the fore-edge, were endeavors to replicate the appearance of manuscripts of classical Latin poetry.
The likelihood that the bindings on these five special copies were commissioned by Summonte and made locally is strong, notwithstanding a dearth of evidence about their recipients and Masone di Maio. Summonte addressed the Carmina to Jacopo Sannazaro, one of Pontano’s disciples, who had helped him recover the manuscript from Pontano’s daughters. None of the three copies in medallion bindings retains any early evidence of ownership, much less the coveted autograph “Iacobi Sanazarii et amicorum.”
Of the five bindings with a medallion portrait of Pontano, the Brooker example is the only one outside Italy. The others of the group are in the Vatican, the national libraries of Florence and Naples, and the communal library of Siena.
The present copy has been refurbished with new endpapers; the copy in Siena is rebound, the original covers laid into a new structure; and the earliest mark of ownership in the copy in Naples appears to be the seventeenth-century ink-stamp of a Neapolitan convent of Reformed Franciscans. Summonte’s edition of Pontano’s De numeris poeticis is dedicated to the Neapolitan nobleman Francisco Puderico (d. 1528), a student of Pontano’s and friend of Sannazaro. The extant copy in a medallion binding has no sign of ownership earlier than an inscription by the Mantuan poet Lelio Capilupi (1497–1563). Summonte’s edition of De sermone et de bello Neapolitano is dedicated to Suardo Suardino, who was from Bergamo, and had acted as agent for Pontano in Venice. The sole surviving copy of it in a medallion binding likewise was collected by Lelio Capilupi.
A year before publishing the Carmina, Summonte had edited for Mayr’s press Sannazaro’s pastoral romance Arcadia, dedicating it to Cardinal Luigi d’Aragona. A copy of that edition with Adriano Fiorentino’s medallic portrait of Sannazaro on the covers, flanked by tabulae ansatae, is also credited by Hobson to the binder Masone di Maio. It contains the ownership inscription “Andreae de Franciscis et Amicorum” of the erudite Andrea de Franceschi (1472–1552), roving ambassador of the Venetian Cancelleria from 1492 until his appointment in 1519 as secretary of the Council of Ten, later Cancellier Grande della Repubblica di Venezia, and custodian of the Biblioteca Marciana; he could be its first owner.
Bindings with Medallion Portrait of Pontano
(1) Pontano, Hoc in volumine opera haec continentur. Parthenopei libri duo (Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, 1505) — the volume here offered for sale.
(2) Pontano, Hoc in volumine opera haec continentur. Parthenopei libri duo (Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, 1505) — Nicola Oliva, OSA (d. 1684), Bishop of Cortona, Priore Generale dell’Ordine agostiniano (1673-1677), inscription, exlibris — Siena, Biblioteca Comunale degli Intronati, IV D 055.De Marinis, op. cit., no. 261; Hobson, op. cit., p.237 no. 84b and pp.258-259 no. B4
(3) Pontano, Hoc in volumine opera haec continentur. Parthenopei libri duo (Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, 1505) — Convento di Santa Croce di Palazzo, Naples, inkstamp — Naples, Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, S.Q. 20. F 0015.Mostra storica della legatura artistica in Palazzo Pitti (Florence 1922), no. 190; The Italian book, 1465-1900: Catalogue of an exhibition held at the National Book League (London 1953), no. 264; De Marinis, op. cit., no. 262 & Pl. 45; Hobson, op. cit., p.237 no. 84c and pp.258-259 no. B5; Angela Pinto, “‘Coverti di seda e d’oro…’ Legature per la corte aragonese” in Libri a corte: testi e immagini nella Napoli aragonese (Naples 1997), pp.76-83 (p.82); Teresa D’Urso, “Un manifesto del ‘classicismo’ aragonese: Il frontespizio della Naturalis historia di Plinio il Vecchio della Biblioteca di Valenza” in Prospettiva 105 (2002), pp.29-50 (p.49 & Fig. 21).
(4) Pontano, Pontani Actius de numeris poeticis: & lege historiae (Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, October 1507) — Lelio Capilupi (ca 1497-ca 1560), inscription (L4r) — Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, RARI.22.B.2.1.Mostra storica della legatura artistica in Palazzo Pitti (Florence 1922), no. 191; Exposition du livre italien, mai-juin 1926: catalogue des manuscrits, livres imprimés, reliures (Paris 1926), no. 865; De Marinis, op. cit., no. 263 & Pl. 46; Hobson, op. cit., p.237 no. 84d and pp.258-259 no. B6; Sara Cirasole, “La biblioteca dimenticata e la sua rinascita nel XIX secolo: Aggiornamento dello studio per la ricostruzione della biblioteca Capilupi di Mantova” in La famiglia Capilupi di Mantova: Vicende storiche di un nobile casato (Mantova 2018), pp.271-298 (p.64).
(5) Pontano, Pontani De sermone et de bello Neapolitano (Naples: Sigismondo Mayr, August 1509) — Lelio Capilupi (ca 1497-ca 1560), inscription “Laelij Capilupi” (verso of title) — E.P. Goldschmidt & Co., London; their Catalogue 36: One hundred books (London 1935), item 79 & Pl. 2 (Grolier Club, E.P. Goldschmidt & Co., Financial records, 1919-1981, Stock Books, #1066; sold (£120) on 16 April 1935, to:) — Tammaro De Marinis (1878-1969) — Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Stamp.De.Marinis.19(int.1).E.P. Goldschmidt, Gothic & Renaissance bookbindings exemplified and illustrated from the author’s collection (London 1928), no. 51 & Pl. 21 (p.72: “These bindings, of which two other specimens seem to have survived beside my own, are the finest examples of the application of a Renaissance medal on bookbindings”); De Marinis, op. cit., no. 264 & Pl. 47; Hobson, op. cit., p.237 no. 84e and pp.258-259 no. B7 & Fig. 88
Folio (297 x 165 mm). Roman type, 40 lines. collation: A–Q8 R–S6 T8: 148 leaves. 3- and 4-line initial spaces with printed guide-letters, first initial colored and gilt. (Quire S supplied from another copy, with extended lower margins, scattered worming.)
binding: Contemporary Neapolitan brown goatskin (310 x 178 mm), attributed to Masone di Maio, covers with gilt palmette border and goatskin inlay, raised cameo portrait of Pontano (from a medallion by Adriano Fiorentino) between tabulae ansatae outlined by gilt fillet, remains of four clasps, edges stained yellow. (Rebacked, other repair, recased with new endpapers). Blue cloth folding-case.
provenance: Louis-Alexandre Barbet (1850–1931; Henri Baudoin, Maurice Ader & Librairie Giraud-Badin, Paris, 13–14 June 1932, lot 129), purchased by — unidentified owner (FF 6000) — Lucien Désiré Prosper Graux (1878–1944; exlibris; Mme Lucien Graux [née Léontine de Flavigny]; Maurice Rheims & Jacqueline Vidal-Mégret, Paris, Bibliothèque du docteur Lucien-Graux, 20–21 March 1958, lot 223 — Arthur Lauria, Paris (Catalogue 55, [1961], item 238 and Pl. 1 (NF 12,000) — Henry Bradley Martin (1906–1988; exlibris; Sotheby’s New York, 14 June 1990, lot 3415. acquisition: Purchased at the Martin sale through Martin Breslauer Inc.
references: Edit16 29824; USTC 850306; for the binding, see De Marinis, La Legatura in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (Florence 1960), no. 260 & Pl. 44; A. Hobson, Humanists and Bookbinders: The Origins and Diffusion of the Humanistic Bookbinding 1459–1559 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 237 (Census of Plaquette and Medallion Bindings, no. 84a) and p. 259 (Appendix 4: Bindings attributed to Masone di Maio, no. B3); Stoddard, “Latin verse of the Renaissance: The Collection and Exhibition at the Houghton Library,” in Harvard Library Bulletin (Summer 1990), pp. 19–38 no. 3.