Bookbindings on Show

In 1922, a spectacular exhibition, Mostra storica della Legatura artistica, took place in the rooms of Florence’s Palazzo Pitti. Entirely devoted to bookbinding, the exhibition included an impressive number of masterpieces preserved not only in major institutional libraries, but also in the possession of antiquarian booksellers and private collectors in Italy and abroad. These magnificent works were displayed alongside one other, narrating a remarkable and fascinating story of book binding, collecting, and dealing over the centuries.

For the exhibition, a total of 1106 volumes were selected; displayed in ten rooms, the volumes covered a wide chronological range, from a Byzantine Evangeliarium of the 11th century to romantic bindings.

We are particularly pleased to ‘virtually’ present here one of the volumes included in the celebrated Mostra storica della Legatura artistica of 1922: the first and only edition of the Rime by Parmesan poet Giacomo Marmitta (1504-1561), member of the Venetian Accademia della Fama founded by Federico Badoer, and a close friend of Giovanni Della Casa. The collection contains 282 poems, most of which are sonnets, and was published posthumously in Parma in 1564 by Seth Viotti on the basis of a manuscript supplied by Marmitta’s heir, his adopted son Ludovico Spaggi (see the complete description here). Despite the rarity of the edition, and the literary interest of its content, the volume was clearly chosen for the exhibition because of its fine contemporary gilt-tooled binding.  

The board of the Florentine exhibition was composed of outstanding scholars, booksellers, and private collectors, and chaired by the art historian and then-director of the Gallerie degli Uffizi, Giovanni Poggi (1880-1961). The secretary of the board was the singular Tammaro De Marinis (1878-1969), a formidable figure who alone represented the ‘three souls’ of the exhibition: in addition to being one of the major antiquarian book dealers of the twentieth century, he was also an extremely refined collector and a renowned scholar, as his monumental La legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI (1960) well attests.

The contribution from private collectors was especially generous. Thirty-two finely bound books were lent by Eugénie (Jenny) Finaly (1850-1938), who had inherited and enlarged the renowned library amassed by her uncle, baron Horace de Landau (1824-1903). Especially noteworthy among the Italian lenders, was the Roman collector Franco Moroli. Moroli contributed ten books to the Florentine exhibition, including a fine copy of De la institutione di tutta la vita de l’huomo nato nobile, e in citta libera, libri .X. by Alessandro Piccolomini (Venezia 1543) housed in an exquisite interlaced strapwork binding executed by Wotton Binder C (fl. ca. 1540s-1550s) for Girolamo Fioravanti; this copy, now sold, was previously included in our catalogue Philobiblon. One Thousand Years of Bibliophily (see the complete description here, cat. no. 100). At the Florence exhibition, the Piccolimini volume was displayed, as the accompanying catalogue states, in the ‘Sala Terza’, or ‘Third Room’ of the Palazzo Pitti, where it was included among a selective array of Italian and French bindings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Mostra storica della Legatura artistica Firenze 1922, Sala Terza. Legature italiane e francesi del sec. XVI. Legature romane dei secc. XVI-XVIII, no. 318).

Meanwhile, the handsome copy of Marmitta’s Rime presented here was displayed in the ‘Sala Seconda’ of the Palazzo Pitti, which was entirely devoted to “sixteenth-century bindings, mostly Italian” (Mostra storica della Legatura artistica, Sala Seconda. Legature del sec.  XVI, principalmente italiane, no. 230).

The volume had been lent to the Florentine exhibition by one of the numerous booksellers participating, Leo Samuel Olschki (1861-1940), whose ex libris is still pasted on the front pastedown.

Previously, this copy had been in the hands of another legendary figure of antiquarian bookselling, Bernard Quaritch (1819-1899), who, throughout his career, was able to offer collectors and institutional libraries an unrivaled series of ‘monuments’ of Italian book production, as well as an impressive selection of fine Italian bindings. In fact, this very copy of Marmitta’s Rime was offered in his Catalogue no. 166, published in London in 1897 under the title Examples of the Art of Book-Binding and Volumes Bearing Marks of Distinguished Ownerships.

In this catalogue, the book is presented “as a fine copy in the original binding”, carefully described, and offered for the sum of 10 pounds (no. 397).

A few years later, the book – offered by Quaritch in “its original Parmesan binding” – was on the shelves of the Florentine bookshop established by Olschki at Lungarno Corsini in 1886, and first presented in his catalogue Le livre en Italie à travers les siècles (no. 121), published on the occasion of the Mostra storica dell’Arte della Stampa in Italia’s presentation in Leipzig in 1914.

Both Quaritch and Olschki held that this fine contemporary brown morocco binding may have been executed in Parma. The covers are framed with a broad border of a geometric interlacing pattern and small floral tools. The great shaped compartment is built up with small tools like roundels, crescents, and fleurs-de-lys, and larger foliate elements at the corners. At the centre of both covers is an inscription stamped in gilt lettering between small three-foil tools, consisting of two verses with rhyming couplets (FIDO | AFFIDO). On the front cover is the first verse ‘OVE HA VERA VIRTU SVO ALBERGO FIDO’, i.e. ‘where the true virtue has its trusty seat’.

The verse on the lower cover reads ‘BEN CHE BASSO ET HVMIL VENIR M’AFFIDO’, i.e. ‘although my address is low and humble, I trust to it’.

These verses variously combine stylemes from Petrarchian poetry and are both unrecorded. Notwithstanding, their function is evident: it is a form of homage from a humble client to a virtuous patron, and a commitment to his munificent protection.

Although the geometric pattern and some of the tools used here – above all the small three-foil shaped tools were frequently used by binders active in other cities, and above all in Venice (see T. De Marinis, Legatura artistica in Italia vol. 2, e.g. nos. 2044, 2240 and 2240), the Parmesan attribution proposed by Quaritch and Olschki is well supported by the verse inscriptions stamped in gilt on the covers. In fact, the edition opens with two preliminary epistles. The first one is signed by the printer Seth Viotti and addressed to Duke Ottavio Farnese (1524-1568); Viotti was, after all, the official printer of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza at that time. The second letter is from Marmitta’s adopted son, Ludovico, and addressed to Giovanni Ricci of Montepulciano (1498-1574), who was named Cardinal by Pope Julius III in 1551. The verses humbly demonstrating gratitude towards a high patronage could be referred to both the dedicatees, and the numerous fleurs-de-lys decorating the covers closely recall the device of the Farnese family. The link with Parma is therefore evident: through a direct presentation copy from the printer to Duke Ottavio, or indirectly as an homage to a cardinal patronized by Pope Farnese, and a lifelong protector of the Parmesan poet Marmitta.

How to cite this information

Margherita Palumbo, “Bookbindings on Show,” PRPH Books, 3 November 2020, https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/marmitta. Accessed [date].

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