Happy Birthday Boccaccio!
Giovanni Boccaccio, one of the ‘Three Crowns’ — along with Dante and Petrarch — of Italian literature, was born on this day in 1313. The son of a Florentine merchant banker, he received his education in Florence and Naples, apprenticed to a counting house, trained in canon law, and frequented the court of King Robert of Anjou before settling into his literary vocation. His body of work is distinguished by its exquisite erudition, innovation, and experimentation, and the immensity of his influence on contemporary and subsequent writers alike cannot be overstated.
In honour of this towering figure, we present here three 16th-century editions of his work, each bearing the marks of distinguished provenance and attesting to the longevity of Boccaccio’s reputation and his critical place in literature and culture.
Cristofano dell'Altissimo, Portrait of Giovanni Boccaccio, ca. 1568. Oil on panel. Galleria degli Uffizi. Public domain.
A sixteenth-century Lucca edition of one of Boccaccio’s earliest works,
from the library of Guglielmo Libri
La Theseide... Innamoramento piaceuole, & honesto di due Giouani Thebani Arcita & Palemone; D’ottaua Rima nuouamente ridotta In Prosa per Nicolao Granucci di Lucca. Aggiuntoui un breve Dialogo nel principio e fine dell’Opera diliteuole, & vario.
Lucca, Vincenzo Busdraghi for Giulio Guidoboni, 1579.
8° (154x100 mm). Printed on blue paper. Collation: a8, A-S8 (fol. F4 signed G4). 8, 144 leaves. Roman and italic type. Woodcut printer’s device on the title-page. Woodcut decorated seven-line initials and headpieces. Fine Parisian red morocco over pasteboards, signed by Hippolyte Duru, and executed in 1847. Covers within double blind fillet. Spine with five small raised bands, emphasized by blind fillets; title lettered in gold. Marbled pastedowns and flyleaves; board edges decorated with gilt fillets, inside dentelles. Gilt edges. A good copy; upper margin of leaves restored, some letters of the running titles reconstructed at the time of binding.
Provenance: Guglielmo Libri (1803-1869; Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de M L**, Paris 1847, lot 2299, “La Theseide, di Gio Boccaccio... Lucca, Vinc. Busdraghi, 1579, in 8. Mar. r. d. Duru. Exemplaire en papier bleu de cette ouvrage curieux”. Sold for 40 francs).
A very rare edition of Boccaccio’s Teseida, presented here in a fine binding executed for Guglielmo Libri by the renowned Parisian binder Hippolyte Duru.
Boccaccio composed the Teseida to demonstrate that a classical epic could be written in vernacular language. The text was produced in three redactions, the first beginning in the early 1340s, and the second and third in the late 1340 and early 1350s. On the model of Virgil’s Aeneis, the poem is divided into twelve books, and consists of 1,238 octaves. The Teseida combines elements from the classical epics and the contemporary tradition of love literature, and was first printed in Ferrara in 1475, edited on the basis of a contaminated text assembled by the Ferrarese Pietro Andrea de’ Bassi. After the Venetian edition of 1529, the Teseida appeared again in Italy only fifty years later, thanks to Nicolò Granucci, who rewrote the text in prose. Boccaccio’s work had notable popularity in medieval English literature, and served as a primary source for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, included in his Canterbury Tales. “Several books occupied Chaucer’s desk while he was composing The Knight’s Tale [...] The most important book on that very crowded desk was the Teseida” (Coleman, The Knight’s Tale, p. 87).
In the annals of Lucchese printer Vincenzo Busdraghi, or Busdrago (1524-1594), Matteucci states that a few copies of the Teseida were issued on carta cerulea.
STC Italian 112; L. Matteucci, “Saggio di un Catalogo delle Edizioni Lucchesi di Vincenzo Busdrago (1549-1605)”, La Bibliofilia, 18 (1917), no. 93; D. Anderson, Before the Knight’s Tale. Imitation of Classical Epic in Boccaccio’s “Teseida”, Philadelphia 1988; W. E. Coleman, “The Knight’s Tale”, R. M. Correale – M. Hamel (eds.), Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, Cambridge 2005, 2, pp. 87-124; R. Daniels, Boccaccio and the Book, London 2009, p. 57; W. E. Coleman, “Teseida delle nozze d’Emilia”, T. De Robertis – C. M. Monti et al. (eds.), Boccaccio autore e copista, Firenze 2013, pp. 89-99.
The device of three interlaced crescents
Il Decamerone... alla sua intera perfettione ridotto, et con dichiarationi et auuertimenti illustrato, per Girolamo Ruscelli....
Venice, Vincenzo Valgrisi and Baldassare Costantini, 1557.
Two parts in one volume, 4° (219x167 mm). Collation: *4, A-Z8, AA-II8; a-g4 (fol. HH2 signed H2). [8], 496, [16]; [56] pages. Roman and italic type. Valgrisi's serpent device on both title-pages, and at the end. Each giornata introduced by a large woodcut (fols. A5v, D2v, H5v, L8v, O8v, R8v, T5v, Y2r, BB7r, DD6v). Numerous woodcut animated initials. Contemporary French calf, over pasteboards. Covers within double frame of multiple blind fillets, the inner frame with gilt fleurons at outer corners. Device of three interlaced crescents tooled in gilt at centre. Traces of ties. Spine with five raised bands, compartments tooled with a single floral tool, title and the number 'XIII' lettered in gilt. Edges gilt. Minor wear at the head of the spine. A very fine copy, slightly browned on the first leaves, a few paper flaws, minor foxing, some fingermarks.
Boccaccio’s most well-known work is The Decameron, presented here in the third and revised Valgrisi edition, lavishly illustrated, and edited for the Venetian printing house by Girolamo Ruscelli (ca. 1518-1566).
The first Decameron from the press of Valgrisi – the famous printer of French origin, active in Venice from 1540 'all'insegna d'Erasmo' – had appeared in 1552, and was intended to rival the successful Giolito editions. The work is supplemented by Ruscelli's Vocabolario generale di tutte le voci usate dal Boccaccio, while the preliminary leaves contain, as an introduction, La vita di messer Giouan Boccaccio, written by Francesco Sansovino (1521-1586). The Valgrisi Decameron is one the finest editions of Boccaccio's work produced in the sixteenth century and is rightly famous for its handsome full-page illustrations introducing each giornata, all newly designed and mentioned – as “figure nuoue & bellissime” – on the title-page. Each woodcut is framed within an architectural border including putti, grotesque figures, antique vases, and floral motifs, and depict scenes from the life at the villa of the brigata of young men and women who had fled from Florence during the plague. The success of the publication was immediate, and Valgrisi re-issued Boccaccio's work in 1554, 1555, and 1557, thereby establishing a new iconography of the Decameron in print. The blocks and borders were later re-used by other Venetian printers, including Agostino Zoppino, Onofrio Farri, and Alessandro Vecchi.
The Valgrisi Decameron presented here is in a fine contemporary French binding. The covers bear at the centre the device of three interlaced crescents, a feature which might suggest the binding was executed for Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566), mistress of King Henry II of France and from 1548 duchess of Valentinois, who used the triple-crescent device. The exquisite library assembled by this femme bibliophile remained in her Château d'Anet until its sale in 1724. For a similar binding on a copy of Cardanus's De subtilitate (1561) see The Michel Wittock Collection. Part I: Important Renaissance Bookbindings, lot 30. It is noticeable that the crescents also appear on bindings from the King's own library.
G. H. Bushnell, 'Diane de Poitiers and Her Books', The Library, 4 (1926-1927), pp. 283-302; J. Porcher, 'Les livres de Diane de Poitiers', Les Trésors des Bibliothèque de France, 26 (1942), pp. 78-89; The Michel Wittock Collection. Part I: Important Renaissance Bookbindings London 2004, lot 30; Philobiblon, One Thousand Years of Bibliophily, no. 121.
Two enigmatic, unidentified monograms, on an early sixteenth-century Venetian binding
Laberinto d’amore... con una Epistola à Messer Pino de rossi confortatoria del medesimo autore.
Florence, Heirs of Filippo Giunta, 1521.
8° (160x95 mm). Collation: A-I8. 72 leaves. Roman and italic type. Blank spaces for capitals, with printed guide letters. Fine contemporary Venetian red morocco over pasteboards. Covers within blind fillets and a gilt acorn and leaf roll. At the centre of both covers two gilt strapwork-pattern tools, the gilt letters ‘.F.G.T.’ on the upper cover and ‘.M.A.G.D.’ on the lower one. Two pairs of holes for ties at the fore-edge. Spine with three small raised bands, with title inked in an early hand. Gilt and gauffered edges. Corners lightly rubbed, minor wear to extremities of spine, joints lightly restored. A fine copy, first leaf lightly soiled and spotted, some marginal foxing, a few spots and minor stains. A few maniculae in a contemporary hand. Small nineteenth-century paper label pasted to front pastedown, with shelfmark ‘N.° 1395 A.II.2’. Some pencilled bibliographical notes on pastedowns.
Provenance: Francesco Riccardi de Vernaccia (b. 1794; engraved ex libris on the front pastedown); Gustavo Camillo Galletti (1805-1868; small stamp on recto of first leaf); Baron Horace de Landau (1824-1903; ex libris on front pastedown, with stamped number ‘47788’).
A finely bound copy of this extremely rare Giuntina edition of one of Boccaccio’s most influential works.
The Labirinto d’amore was written in the mid-1350s; it is also known as Corbaccio, an alternative title introduced in the Florentine editio princeps of 1487, although the word ‘corbaccio’ never actually occurs in the work. It certainly derives from the Italian ‘corvo’, i.e., crow, possibly recalling the satire Ibis by Ovid, one of Boccaccio’s favourite sources. The text was edited by Bernardo Giunta, who addressed his publishing initiative to ‘gli Amatori della Lingua Toscana’ – admirers of Tuscan language – emphasizing Boccaccio’s critical early role in the tradition of Italian vernacular prose.
This copy is housed in a fine contemporary binding in red morocco of the highest quality, suggesting that it was executed for a wealthy patron, the identity of whom remains hidden despite the gilt lettering on its covers, ‘.F.G.T.’, and ‘.M.A.G.D.’. The binding was in all likelihood produced in a Venetian workshop, owing to the lettering employed in these inscriptions as well as the use of the knot-tool, a fairly common tool design used by various Venetian binders; this tool even came to act as a sort of signature of the most inventive and talented craftsman, the Mendoza Binder, so-named because of his main client, the Spanish ambassador Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who was active there between ca. 1520 and 1555 (see, for example, The Henry Davis Gift, no. 262, for a binding by the Mendoza Binder dated to ca. 1523, bearing the same knot-tool and an inscription in a similar pattern). The fine border framing the covers is formed with small mirror leaves and acorn tools, decorative motifs likewise used in various Venetian binder’s workshops in the first decades of the Cinquecento.
Adams B-2182; Camerini 185; M. A. Foot, The Henry Davis Gift: A Collection of Book Bindings iii, London 1978; L. Nuvoloni, “Commissioni dogali. Venetian Bookbindings in the British Library”, D. Pearson (ed.), ‘For the Love of Binding’, Studies in Bookbinding History Presented to Mirjam Foot, London-Newcastle, DE 2000, pp. 81-109.