Primo Copy Of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons $270,000-$400,000 At Christie's

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I need to produce great ideas, and I believe that if I were commissioned to design a new universe, I would be mad enough to undertake it" (Piranese).

A magnificent copy of the scarce first edition of Italian artist and printmaker Giovanni Battista Piranese's (1720-1778) celebrated suite of designs for an imaginary prison, Invenzioni Capric di Carceri (Rome: Giovanni Bouchard, n.d. [c. 1750]) - which has had an enormous influence upon literature - is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants livres anciens, livres d'artistes & manuscrits sale, April 30, 2014.

With all of its fourteen beautifully designed and etched plates in their first impression, second state (except one), before numbering and retouching, on un-watermarked paper, and in excellent condition, it is estimated to sell for $270,000-$400,000.

The plates depict fanciful subterranean vaults and machines somewhat Kafkaesque in nature, with surreal distortion later found in the work of M.C. Escher, featuring bizarre, labyrinthine structures that are chemerical mash-ups of monumental architecture, epic caprices depicting "ancient Roman or Baroque ruins converted into fantastic, visionary dungeons filled with mysterious scaffolding and instruments of torture" (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Only the engravings of Goya and William Blake have inspired writers as much as those of Piranesi's Carceri.  Their roots lie in the theatrical dioramas that Piranese designed for the Galli da Bibiena family of stage set designers in Bologna as well as those for his father, a stonemason.

The rare second edition, later published by Piranese himself with the plates reworked, contains an extra two plates yet here "in Bouchard's edition the plates are more lightly etched throughout with none of the strong contrasts of light and shade seen in the later edition. There is a wonderful simplicity in the design in the early states, and none shows this quality in greater beauty than plate four of the series" ( Hind ).

The haunting, dream-like quality to the plates fired the imagination of the Romantics.

"The fascination of Piranese's Imaginary Prisons for the literary mind is attested by transmutations in story, poem, and essay. In a recent attempt to explain the appeal, Aldous Huxley remarks that the etchings express obscure psychological truths: they represent 'metaphysical prisons, whose seat is within the mind, whose walls are made of nightmare and incomprehension, whose chains are anxiety and their racks a sense of personal and even generic guilt.' Whatever the explanation may be, the influence of the Prisons on writers of the last two centuries, particularly on the Romantics, will one day make a chapter of literary history which will include the names of Walpole, Beckford, Coleridge, De Quincey, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, and doubtless many others" (Paul F. Jamieson. Musset, de Quincey, and Piranese. Modern Language Notes, Vol. 71, No. 2, Feb. 1956).

"Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist...which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever: some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) representing vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers, catapults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls, you perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further, and you perceive it come to a sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him" (Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater).

The Plates:

I - Title
II - The Round Tower
III - The Grand Piazza
IV - The Smoking Fire
V - The Drawbridge
VI - The Staircase with Trophies
VII - The Giant Wheel
VIII - Prisoners on a Projecting Platform
IX - The Arch with a Shell Ornament
X - The Sawhorse
XI - The Well
XII - The Gothic Arch
XIII - The Pier with a Lamp
XIV - The Pier with Chains

"One of the greatest printmakers of the eighteenth century, Piranesi always considered himself an architect. The son of a stonemason and master builder, he received practical training in structural and hydraulic engineering from a maternal uncle who was employed by the Venetian waterworks, while his brother, a Carthusian monk, fired the aspiring architect with enthusiasm for the history and achievements of the ancient Romans. Piranesi also received a thorough background in perspective construction and stage design. Although he had limited success in attracting architectural commissions, this diverse training served him well in the profession that would establish his fame" (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

This copy, formerly in the collection of the National Gallery of Art (with small stamp on the back of each plate with stamp cancellation), was last seen at Christie's-London July 2, 2003 when it sold for $140, 506 (£83,650; €101,704).

Grégoire Dupond created the below animated film for Factum Arte, based upon Piranesi's engravings for Invenzioni Capric di Carceri, as a walk through the artist's amazing spaces:

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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The Bible Of Unconscious Buffoonery

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra engraved titlepage.

Imagine that you've written a book that no one will publish; it's considered over-long and looney. So, to pump-up its importance, impress, and tacitly solicit subscriptions, you ask eminent men, oh, around sixty of 'em, to contribute "panegyricke verses upon the Authour and his booke" extolling your wonderfulness and that of your volume. Amazingly, they do. But your contributors ridicule the book.

You include their mockery, anyway. Some attention is better than none. You underwrite the cost of printing the book yourself and in doing so produce one of the great vanity publications ever issued, and if your contributors insult you, well, how flattering to your vanity that these great men took the time to do so.

Such was the case of Thomas Coryat (1577-1617) and his book, Three crude veines are presented in this booke following (besides the foresaid Crudities): no less flowing in the body of the booke, then the Crudities themselues, two of rhetoricke and one of poesie…, popularly known by its title from the engraved titlepage/frontispiece (and subsequent editions) as Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia com[m]only called the Grisons county, Heluetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands. Newly Digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, now dispersed to the nourishment of the traveling Members of the Kingdome.

Coryat's traveling shoes.

Within, Coryat records his step-by-step 1,975 mile schlep across Western Europe. He didn't intend for it to be funny, it just turned out that way. Outlandish, toilsome and wacky adventures are related with such sober and solemn seriousness that the clod is completely unaware that he is a clown in his own touring circus.

"There probably has never been another such combination of learning and unconscious buffoonery as is here set forth. Coryate was a serious and pedantic traveller who (as he states in his title) in five months toilsome travel wandered, mostly on foot, over a large part (by his own reckoning 1,975 miles) of western Europe. His adventures probably appeared to his contemporaries as more ridiculous than exciting, but at this remove, his chronicle by its very earnestness provides an account of the chief cities of early seventeenth century Europe which is at least valuable as it is amusing. It was probably his difficulties with the booksellers which induced Coryate to solicit the extraordinary sheaf of testimonials prefixed to the volume. Possibly he acted upon the notion apparently now current among publishers of social directories that every person listed is a prospective purchaser of the work. At any rate he secured contributions from more than sixty writers at the time. Among his panegyrists appear the names of Jonson, Chapman, Donne, Campion, Harington, Drayton, Davies of Hereford, and others, each contributor vying to mock poor Coryate with solemn ridicule." (Pforzheimer) 

Now, imagine you're Ben Jonson, one of the contributors. You've read the book, and, after re-inserting your eyeballs - which, as if in an animated cartoon, grew to the size of softballs and popped-out of their sockets - you consider what to make of this. As your contribution you write a verse explanation of the engraved frontispiece, decoding its emblematic illustrations. It reads, in part:

Our Author in France rode on Horse without stirrop,
And in Italic bathed himselfe in their syrrop.

His love to horses he sorteth out strange prettilie,
He rides them in France, and lies with them in Italie.

You get the idea. It's an Elizabethan comedy roast but the roastee (known as the British Ulysseys, with accent on Odd-essy), basking in the attention, is deaf to the jokes. It's Mystery Science Theater 3000, the book edition, with eminent readers hurling written wisecracks at the deliriously ridiculous and over-long text while they peruse it from their reading chair, rather than vocally razzing a deliriously ridiculous and over-long movie from their seats in the theater.

Here's an excerpt from John Donne's panegyric to Coryat and his Crudities:

This Booke, greater than all, producest now,
Infinite worke, which doth so farre extend,
That none can study it to any end.
Tis no one thing; it is not fruite, nor roote;
Nor poorly limited with head or foote.
If man be therefore man, because he can
Reason, and laugh, thy booke doth halfe make man.
One halfe being made, thy modesty was such,
That thou on th' other halfe wouldst never touch.
When wilt thou be at full, great Lunatique?

Ouch!

Coryat apparently experienced this - and the other testimonials - as "Oooh, they like me, they really like me!"

I am sory I can speake so little of so flourishing and beautifull a Citie [as Turin]. For during that little time that I was in the citie, I found so great a distemperature in my body, by drinking the sweete wines of Piemont, that caused a grievous inflammation in my face and hands; so that I had but a smal desire to walke much abroad in the streets. Therefore I would advise all English-men that intend to travell into Italy, to mingle their wine with water as soone as they come into the country, for feare of ensuing inconveniences... 

In short, Coryat was drunk during his entire stay in Turin.

Complete copies of Coryat's Crudities are scarce. "Perfect copies with the plates intact are not common...The D.N.B. has repeated the statement that the Chetham copy is the only perfect one known" (Pforzheimer).

A complete copy has, however, recently come into the marketplace.  Offered by Whitmore Rare Books, the asking price is $25,000. Despite its faults it's one of the great travelogues.

"Coryate drew on his experiences in writing Coryats Crudities (1611), which was intended to encourage courtiers and gallants to enrich their minds by continental travel. It contains illustrations, historical data, architectural descriptions, local customs, prices, exchange rates, and food and drink, but is too diffuse and bulky - there are 864 pages in the 1905 edition - to become a vade-mecum. To solicit ‘panegyric verses’ Coryate circulated copies of the title-page depicting his adventures and his portrait, which had been engraved by William Hole and which he considered a good likeness. About sixty contributors include many illustrious authors, not all in verse, some insulting, some pseudonymous" (DNB).

Coryat Meets Margarita Emiliana bella Cortesana di Venetia,

As for Thomas Coryat, the "great Lunatique" died in 1617 and now permanently sleeps with the horses in Italy, which beats sleeping with the fishes in Sicily. It's the difference among character assassination, corporeal execution, and the bestial joy of equine companionship on an arduous journey; bathing in horse-piss in Italy was a bonus, pass the Purell, please - and a barf-bag and incontinence pad, the better to endure Coryat's voyage to France and his feed to hungry fish as written in chapter one's first sentence:

I was imbarked at Dover, about tenne of the clocke in the morning, the fourteenth of May, being Saturday and Whitsun-eve, Anno 1608, and arrived in Calais (which Caesar calleth Ictius portus, a maritime towne of that of part Picardy, which is commonly called le pais reconquis; that is, the recovered Province, inhabited in former times by the ancient Morini) about five of the clocke in the afternoone, after I had varnished the exterior parts of the ship with the excrementall ebullitions of my tumultuous stomach, as desiring to satiate the gormandizing paunches of the hungry Haddocks (according as I have hieroglyphically expressed it in the front of my booke) with that wherewith I had superfluously stuffed my selfe at land, having made my rumbling belly their capacious aumbrie.

It isn't often that an author opens his book with a tableau presenting the painting of a ship with his (or anyone else's) diarrhea. It's a riveting first sentence with repulsive denouement; readers may spew the contents of their now tumultuous stomachs through their northern orafice. Yes, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, a dark and stormy night, with emphasis on the dark storm raging at Coryat's southern orafice. Yet sunny skies and silliness await the intrepid reader. Be not afraid. Read on ye armchair traveller, you have nothing to lose but your sanity to this seventeenth century version of your friend's interminable seminar with soporific slideshow about a recent vacation, no detail too picayune to omit. Coryat, for instance, never fails to tell the exact time of day that something occurred, and, it seems, reports on everything he put in his mouth -

 I did eate fried Frogges this citie [Cremona]

- and everything he encountered, with the possible exception of dust motes. He then concludes his exhausting review of each city with a breezy, unintentionally amusing, "so much for Paris;" "so much for Venice;" "so much for Milan." It's so very much.

Yea, verily and alas, the booke lacketh backgrounde musik by the eminent Elizabethan composer and performer, Boots Randolph, playing that olde English aire, Yaketie Saxe, to highlight its slapsticke gravitie and the inadvertent Keystone Cop qualitie of Coryat's adventures chasing after Europe, and enliven his dreary descriptions.

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Titlepage.

CORYAT, Thomas. [From engraved title]: Coryats Crudities. Hastily gobled up in five moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia com[m]only called the Grisons county, Heluetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands. Newly Digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, now dispersed to the nourishment of the traveling Members of the Kingdome. London: Printed by W[illiam]. S[tansby]., 1611. First edition.  Quarto in eights (8 1/8 x 6 inches; 206 x 153 mm). [-]2; a8-b8 ([-]1 inserted after a3); b4; c8-g8; h4-l4; B8-D8 (D3 inserted after preceding D); E8-3C8; 3D4; [-]2 (first is signed 3E3; both are errata). Extra engraved titlepage (i.e. frontispiece) by William Hole, five engraved plates (three folding), two text engravings and numerous woodcut initials and head-pieces. With two leaves of errata.

Pforzheimer 218. Cox 98. Keynes 70.

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Images courtesy of Whitmore Rare Books, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.
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Seven More Stunning Modernist Posters

by Stephen J. Gertz

More from Swann Galleries' Modernist Posters sale, held yesterday.

James Harley Minter designed this poster, Bal Pa'Pillon, in 1931 for The Kokoon Club of Cleveland, Ohio, founded in 1911 by Carl Moellman and William Sommer, young American artists inspired by the Dadaist movement and similar avant-garde organizations in Europe, and modeled after New York's Kit Kat Club. The club held annual costume balls, which began in 1913 and continued through 1938.

"This decadent, cubist-influenced image is an electric, microcosmic view of Cleveland's avant-garde artistic community. Presaging the psychedelic posters of the 1960s and reflecting many of the concurrent graphic art trends in Europe, this poster, and the entire series for the club's yearly balls, are bright, bold, daring and stand out as exciting and innovative examples of American design. Each poster also served as an invitation to the event, with the invitee's name written in across the bottom" (Nicholas D. Lowry). I hope Margaret Brennan had as much fun at this soirée as I did viewing its poster.

I am pleased to report that the head-snapping whiplash I experienced after learning that Cleveland possessed an avant-garde artistic community has been successfully treated via review of gangbuster Elliot Ness's checkered career as Cleveland's Public Safety Director followed by an unsuccessful run for mayor of Cleveland in 1938. I have no snobbish animus toward Cleveland; I simply had no idea that the city possessed a hip culture. 

For more about The Kokoon Club of Cleveland, including a survey of other gorgeous posters for its costume balls go here.

For Viaggiate Di Notte (1930), designed by famed graphic artist Adolphe Mouron Cassandre (1901-1968) for Wagons Lits (a railroad sleeping car company),  the artist chose an "unquestionably persuasive" (Mouron p. 69) symbolic and poetic approach to advertising.

"The breathtakingly simple device of a red light glowing in the foggy darkness of a railroad siding is perfectly consistent with our poetically charged experience of looking out the window of a speeding night express" (op cit, Mouron).

"It is an elegant and inviting approach, evoking travel by night. The poster exists with different text variants, but this one is the least cluttered. This is also the rare Italian version. We could locate only one other copy in the collection of the Suntory Museum in Japan" (Lowry).

Cassandre, again. Turmac / La Cigarette is one of his earliest posters, designed in 1925. "It predates the time when his work began to reflect his radical and ingenious design theories. He employs a sensuous approach which doesn't appear again in his work until 1937, when a similar smoldering cigarette is featured in his poster for Sensation Cigarettes. Nevertheless, it also foreshadows some of his subsequent graphic finesse: within the stylized smoke and the outside border, he plays with the interchange between shades of blue, white and black in a manner that presages his typographic work in later posters such as Pivolo, Nord Express and Étoile du Nord. The actual typography on this poster is an exceptional mix of Art Deco and the Arabesque. We have not found another copy at auction for the past 30 years" (Lowry). 

Jac Leonard (1904-1980), a Canadian artist, created Beware The Walls Have Ears c. 1940, It's one in a series of posters printed by Canada's Wartime Information Board, similar in aim and approach to those published by the American War Office in its Careless Talk Kills series issued during World War II.

A swastika-eyed secret villain, photo-montage, bold, bright typography and powerful imagery - this progressive design has it all and makes its point as firmly as a hammer to the noggin.

Edgar Scauflaire (1893-1960) was a Belgian artist who studied at the Académie des Beaux Arts in Liége, where he was born. Many of his paintings clearly reflect the influence of Picasso and Braque. He also designed murals and tapestries. This Art Deco-inspired, aquatic allegory is one of at least two posters used to promote the International Exposition de L'Eau of 1939.

After studying art at the Munich Academy under Julius Diez and Angelo Jank, Hermann Keimel (1889-1948) went on to become a teacher at the same institution. He was a member of the artistic group "The Twelve," and also of the new Munich Association of Poster Artists. He designed numerous commercial posters, generally employing a crisp Art Deco style. Muenchner / Plakat Kunst (1931) is his masterpiece and remains an icon of poster self-promotion: to promote an exhibition of Munich poster art Keimel constructed this cubist face out of colored sheets of printing paper.

Manilo Parrini (1901-1968) created this striking aeronautical-themed poster for the 3d International Aircraft Exhibition held in conjunction with the Milan Trade Fair of 1939.

He worked during Mussolini's regime in Italy, which is to say in a monumental, over the top, grandiose glory of Rome epic style, light on subtlety; the anvil school of messaging. Here, in a Fascist salute to Il Duce, he incorporates a trio of fasces on the tail fin of the plane in the foreground, while the three planes in the distance are streaming the colors of the Italian flag behind them.

In case anyone misses the symbolism of fasces on the tail, it's a visual representation of baciarmi il  Fascista culo,  if not an official, explicit political slogan, a casually implicit one.

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Réne Magritte designed posters and sheet music? Stop by Booktryst tomorrow for the story.

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Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.
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What To Expect When You're Done Expecting: Dr. Spock in 1577

By Stephen J. Gertz

Safety Helmet.

It's in Latin, so it's not quite what you want to have on the nightstand when your baby or child has a bad case of whatever and you can''t translate "Vocant IX-I-I" in time for the paramedics to arrive and resolve the crisis before your kid kicks the bucket.

But though not a popular guide, De arte medica infantium by Omnibonius Ferrari (1577) was a key go-to book on pediatrics, Dr. Spock's Baby & Child Care for sixteenth century doctors and Latin-literate parents who could afford it.

Breast Milk Pump.

Divided into three parts, in 195 pages it covers the management of wet nurses; the care and feeding of the newborn; and the diseases of children.

Typically bound together with De arte medica infantium aphorismorum, a list of 273 aphorisms by Ferrari on the care and diseases of children based on the writings of Hippocrates and Galen but with a number of additions from contemporary sources, the two works present the state of the medical arts for infant care.

Toilet Training.

Or particular interest for 21st century mothers are the four text engravings which illustrate a self-operated breast pump for harvesting milk, a device for training children to walk, a  potty-training  toilet, and a helmet made to protect the child's head from injury, each early designs for now commonplace items in the inventory of modern motherhood.

In an age of harsh conditions, the concept of the child as tender and vulnerable and in need of a nurturing environment was beginning to emerge. De arte medica infantium  was amongst the most important contemporary medical books of its kind and provides insight into views on  late sixteenth century child care and psychology that will be startling familiar to modern parents.

Rolling Crib For Training To Walk.

"The illustrations are of interest…as they show two commonly used child-training devices of the past – the running stool, ancestor of the present-day walker, and the chair stool,  which held infants in a sitting position. Both of these devices were denounced by Ferrarius’s contemporary Felix Wurtz, who described the undue strain they put on undeveloped infant muscles” (Norman).

"In 1577 Ognibene Ferrari of Verona, Italy, proposed that the home be 'child-proofed'; offered designs for developmentally appropriate walkers, potty chairs, and helmets; and argued that 'the greatest care must be taken that he does not see terrifying pictures, nor should the one who has charge of him shew himself to him with a stern look on his face, lest he cause him fright, and so through depression and overmuch grieving he be ill affected'" (Review of Nurturing Children: A History of Pediatrics in JAMA, Nov. 1, 2000).

Amongst the "terrifying pictures" that should probably be kept from tender eyes is any image of mama mia! Italian actress and mama Monica Bellucci in the lobby of the Excelsior hotel in Rome using Ferrari's breast milk pump while the paparazzi pretend to be ga-ga over her pair of peepers rather than endowments. Grown men can barely tolerate the view without convulsions, forget about little Gianni who might grow up to have visions of sugar plums fairies and marriage to La Cicciolina, a terrifying prospect indeed.

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FERRARI, Omnibonius. De arte medica infantium, libri quatuor. Quorum duo priores de tuenda eorum sanitate, posteriores de curandis morbis agunt. [Bound with] De arte medica infantium aphorismorum, particulae tres. Brixiæ [Brescia], apud Franciscum, & Pet. Mariam fratres, de Marchettis, 1577.            

First editions, two works in one. Small quarto. [xii], 195, [1] pp.; 22 pp. With errata, four engraved text illustrations, large illustrated woodcut initials, ornamental head- and tailpieces. Marchetti's anchor and dolphin device on both title pages.

Both reprinted in 1598 and usually bound as one.

Adams F-288 (Aphorismorum), F-289 (De Arte Medica, 1598 ed). Normon 787 (De Arte Medica), 788 (Aphorismorum). Grulee 452 (De Arte Medica), 454 (Aphorismorum).

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B. & L. Rootenberg Rare Books and Manuscripts is currently offering a lovely first edition copy of these two volumes bound together.

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How To Dance The Tarantella, In Scarce Lithographs (Cue The Godfather Theme)

By Stephen J. Gertz

Poor  "Frankie Five Angels" Pentangeli. He schleps all the way from New York to the Corleone estate in Nevada for little Anthony's Communion celebration and is offered a "can o' peas," i.e. Ritz crackers with chopped liver. He wants the Rosato brothers dead; Michael Corleone tells him to baciarmi culo e affancul. 

As if things could not get any worse, it's an Italian party and the band doesn't know the diff between a tarantella and Pop Goes the Weasel. É un incubo! A nightmare! I mean, everybody knows Zooma Zooma. It's like the national anthem.  It comes automatic with a slice of pizza. Wha's a matta wich you? C'mon now, sing d'song!

C'e' la luna mezza 'o mare
Mamma mia m'ho maritari
Figlia mia a cu t' ho dare
Mamma mia pensaci tu
S'iddu nun e' lu musicante
Iddu vai, iddu vene
Sempe lu strumento a mano tene
Se ci piglia 'a fantasia
Lu strumento figlia mia


Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Oh, mamma zooma zooma baccala'
Zooma zooma, zooma zooma
Zooma baccala'

If  Pentangeli had a copy of Gaetano Dura's Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine (c. 1834) with him on that fateful day a travesty could have been avoided. It illustrates how to perform the tarantella in eighteen beautifully hand-colored lithographed plates as a fold-out panorama, with captions. As a bonus for bandleaders who haven't a clue, another plate contains the music of a typical tarantella in its traditional rhythm, triplets in 6/8.

"[Of note in] the trend of  illustrating  Neapolitan folklore... is  the lithographic album titled Tarantella. Neapolitan Dance, drawn entirely by Dura [1805-1878], published in Naples in 1833, and lithographed by Gatti in 1834 [as Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine].

"Dura's [Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine], a very important document for the reconstruction of the Neapolitan tarantella, presents nineteen plates, accompanied by captions that explain, step by step, all the different phases of the dance.

"The style of the illustrations is  basic:  two dancers, drawn not without a certain grace and accuracy, move isolated on a white background completely devoid of any decoration or pittoresco.

"In the mid-1830s Dura became associated with Gatti, founding a lithographic establishment that soon became one of the most important in Naples. The brand of "Gatti and Dura"  published prints, calendars, atlases, graphic novels and works of a popular nature, such as almanacs and miscellanies"  (Encyclopedia Treccani.it, L'Enciclopedia Italiana).

This is an extremely rare book. ABPC records only one complete copy at auction since 1923; an incomplete copy with only ten plates was sold in 1955. OCLC/KVK note only three institutional copies, at Harvard, NYPL, and Austria State Library.

Poor Frankie Five Angels. If he'd known that not too far away,  in '50s Las Vegas, an Über-Guido was bompin' 'n stompin', working The Strip like crazy,  in the process becoming an Italian-American royal mixing classic tarantella, American pop, and jazz into a zesty zuppe de verdure, Frankie would have had Willy Cicci escort the man back to Casa de Corleone for a command performance of real, honest to goodness tarantella. Instead, he later slit his wrists.

Below, after paying tarantella tribute to Angelina, the girl who serves spumoni (and is ripe for matrimony), Il Re di Las Vegas, backed by Sam Butera and The Witnesses, sings Zooma Zooma better than anybody since Mama Corleone at Connie's wedding back in August '45, in the good old days, before, you know...



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DURA, Gaetano. Souvenir de la Tarantella Napolitaine dirigée par Louis Puccinelli Maitre de Danse dessinée par Gaetan Dura. Naples: Gatti et Dura, n.d. [c. 1834].

First edition. Oblong octavo (5 7/16 x 7 1/8 in; 138 x181 mm). Hand-colored lithographed frontispiece, engraved title, one plate of music notation, and seventeen hand-colored lithographed plates with captions, a total of twenty panels in panorama format unfolding to 142 1/2 inches.

Cf. Colas 921.
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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Magnificent 15th C. Illuminated Hebrew Manuscript Estimated $540K - $800K

By Stephen J. Gertz

Cantor pointing to The Book of Life, opening Yom Kippur.

A mahzor, or Jewish holiday prayerbook, an illuminated manuscript in Hebrew on vellum from Tuscany (likely Florence), c. 1490s, is being offered by Christie's - Paris on May 11, 2012. It is estimated to sell for €400,000 - €600,000 ($540,000 - $800,000).

Ark of the Covenant, with men teaching in the synagogue below.

It is magnificently illuminated in the characteristic style of Giovanni di Giuliano Boccardi, known as Boccardino il vecchio (Boccardino the Old, 1460-1529) and considered one of the last representatives of the golden age of Florentine renaissance illumination. His princely clients included Lorenzo de' Medici "Il Magnifico," and Matthias Corvinus

Leaf with illuminated border and headpiece.

While Boccardino's work dominates the first sixty-eight leaves, subsequent illuminations were completed by followers or members of his workshop after Boccadino's designs.

Frontispiece with border medallions.
Note coat of arms in lower panel, flanked by cherubs.

The Jewish community of Florence flourished in the 15th-century, their position closely linked to the fortunes of the de' Medici. Lorenzo il magnifico was their protector; he encouraged Jewish scholarship and scholars. It is, then, unsurprising that Jewish patrons of this Mahzor solicited an artist who worked for Lorenzo for this luxury manuscript. While Christian Florentines illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, this Mahzor appears to be the only example  illuminated by Boccardino.

Mose holding the tablets of the law.

Raising of the Passover Seder basket.

The coat of arms bears resemblance to the Ambron family but coats of arms used by Jewish families were inventions, not official, and variable, employing traditional Jewish symbols. Positive identification is difficult. The manuscript's 16th century binding bears a central medallion combining elements of the armorial devices of various Italian noble families, including the Tedeschi and Uzielli of Tuscany

Leaf with illuminated initial and vignette.

A couple in bed.

The Sabbath meal.

Containing prayers for the entire Jewish liturgical year, the Mahzor  includes: blessing of the Name of the Lord; a hundred blessings to be recited daily; blessing for the Lord; the recitation of Shema and prayers to be said before retiring to bed; for the Sabbath;  for the blessing for a new moon;  for Hanukkah with extracts from the Book of Esther; prayers to be said before reading the Megillah; for Passover;  before the fast of Tammuz, followed by prayers for the fast of the Ninth of Av and relating to the Book of Lamentations, followed by prayers and Psalms; prayers for Rosh Hashanah; for Yom Kippur; for Sukkoth; Tsam'a Nafshi, the 12th-century poem by Abraham ibn Ezra, the author's name picked out acrostically in the margin; and commentary on the death of Moses in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Leaf with illuminated vignette.

This mahzor was still in Italy early in the 17th century when it was seen by the Christian censors Fra Hippolytus of Ferrara and Camillo Jagel who signed the final leaf, in 1601 and 1611(?). An inserted note records the purchase of the manuscript in Frankfurt before 1908. It was published in London, 1930, in Adler's Jewish Travellers, when it was in the possession of E. Bicart-Sée in Paris and then by descent to the present family owners.

Binding, lower board.

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MAHZOR. Tuscany (Florence?), c.1490s. Small octavo (6.61 x 4.9 inches; 168 x 125 mm). ii, 442 leaves, apparently complete with catchwords on final versos of many gatherings, some signature still visible, foliation every 10 leaves includes front flyleaves and is followed here, 20 lines of Italian semi-cursive script in black ink, with vowel points, rubrics in smaller script mostly in red or blue, Hebrew square script for initial words, prayers for Yom Kippur highlighted in gold, initial word panels throughout in burnished gold on red, green or blue grounds, some embellished with marginal sprays, text illustrations including the Matzah and Maror, FRONTISPIECE WITH FULL-PAGE BORDER INCORPORATING MEDALLIONS WITH PROFILE HEADS, LANDSCAPE VIGNETTES AND THE COAT OF ARMS OF THE ORIGINAL OWNER, two openings with similar single panel borders and a two-sided floral border on a vellum ground, TWO SMALL, TWO HALF-PAGE AND FOUR FULL-PAGE MINIATURES, two of them with full-page borders incorporating coats of arms, edges gilt and gauffered (occasional light losses of pigment or gold, some unobtrusive smudging or offsetting, a few marginal creases, some fading of ink, particularly to final leaf).

Mid 16th-century Italian gold-tooled dark brown goatskin over thin wooden boards with strapwork painted in red and yellow, both covers with central cartouche with coat of arms, elaborately decorated with a unicorn and rabbit, hatched leaf and flower tools, solid dots and foliate rolls, evidence of two fore-edge clasps, four nail holes at edge of cartouche, (rebacked, repaired at board edges, paint rubbed, clasps missing).

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Images courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
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Five Great 20th Century Bindings

by Stephen J. Gertz

Five exquisite bindings recently jumped out of a rare book dealer's catalog, grabbed my eyes and wouldn't let go. Now I'm blind-stamped and bowled-over by them but can't complain; "it is beauty that captures your attention" (Oscar Wilde). It'll capture yours, too.

BRAQUE, Hesiode. Theogonie. Eaux-fortes de Georges Braque. Paris: Maeght Editeur, 1955. Limited to 150 copies o papier d'Auvergne à la main, signed by Georges Braque. Folio. 78 pp. Twenty original etchings (seventeen full page).

Full dark chocolate crushed morocco by Cubism/Surrealism-influenced binder, Paul Bonet (1889-1971), arguably the most celebrated  French binder of his era, with his signature gilt, large curvilinear excised section from front and rear boards with onliad black and white polished calf sections and additional onlaid sections of shaded yellow and green crushed morocco to form two large vignette motifs, onlaid title to spine in Greek, yellow and green suede doublures.

"Born in Paris in 1889 to Belgian parents, Bonet rose to become the leader of French binders. Two particular styles of his work are known as "irradiante," which consists of massed gilt lines giving a three-dimensional optical-illusion effect, and "rayonnante," a sun-burst effect" (Morgan Library).

ALBISOLA, Tullio (poet and designer). MUNARI, Bruno (illustrator).  Poeti Futuristi. L'Anguria Lirica. Presentazione di [Filippo Tommaso]  Marinetti. Roma: Edizioni Futuristi di Poesie, 1934. Limited to fifty copies for sale, of a total edition of 101. Square octavo. Twenty-one metal leaves with lithographic text by d'Albisola and eleven color lithographed plates by Bruno Munari. Typography and mise en page by d'Albisola.

One of three rare and important Futurist metal books (the first, Parole in libertà futuriste, tattili-termiche-olfattive, published in 1932; Libro di latta aggressivo e contundente, published in 1933), a monument to Futurist book production. Binding in full lithographed metal by  Lito-Latta Nosenzo of Savona, a manufacturer of metal storage boxes, after design by Albisola.

MAILLOL, Aristide. HORACE. Odes d'Horace. Texte Latin et Traduction en Vers par le Baron Delort. Gravures sur Bois d'Aristide Maillot. Paris: Philip Gonin, Editeur, 1939.  One of fifty édition de tête copies on papier de chanvre et lin with a suite of all the plates in black and a suite in color, initialed by the publisher on the colophon of each volume and on the wrappers to each suite. Two octavo volumes. 179; 278 pp. Frontispiece,123 woodcut text illustrations.

Full green polished calf by Pierre-Lucien Martin (1913-1985), boards and spines with onlaid section of pale green calf to form two-tone mirrored decorative scheme.

"Pierre-Lucien Martin (1913-1985) ranks high among the outstanding French design binders of the last half century. Trained at the École Estiènne in Paris, he gained experience in several binderies before emerging as a designer in his own right after World War II. His designs are characterized by understated color, impressive three-dimensional effects, and intricate but highly logical applications of geometry" (Six Centuries of Master Bookbinding at Bidwell Library).

ERNST, Max. PÉRET, Benjamin. Je Sublime. Paris: Editions Surrálistes, 1936, 30 June. One of twenty-five hors commerce numbered examples on papier le Roy Louis' tiente Normandie, of a total edition of 241 copies. Octavo. 24 ff. Four original color frottages on cream paper by Max Ernst.

Full white crushed morocco with alligator patterning by Georges Leroux, ruled in blind and applied in cross-grained sections, boards with onlaid lozenges as eyes with applied sections of white and green morocco as pupil and iris, title to spine in green and black.

Georges Leroux (1922-1999), one of the most accomplished and esteemed French binders of the twentieth century, began his career as a poet before becoming a binder in 1959. Marked by the use of exotic materials, inset metal plaques and strong polychromatic color, books from the early stage of his career (as here) were designed and executed (rather than simply designed) by Leroux.

SCHMIED, François-Louis (illustrator and binder). MARDRUS, J.C. Le Livre de la Verité de Parole. Transcription des Textes Egyptiens Antiques. Paris: Chez F.-L. Schmied, 1929. :Limited to 150 copies signed by Schmied, with two suites of the illustrations on Japon, in b&w and color. Quarto. Twelve wood cut illustrations.

Bound in full Jansenist brown crushed morocco by François-Louis Schmied (1873-1941) over beveled wooden boards, with doublures in matching morocco, each decorated with a inlaid lacquer panel, the first representing a falcon in salmon and gold, the second an eagle with wings spread above orange flames, each lacquer panel bordered by inlaid gold bands, with a double set of silk endpapers, one aubergine, the other cardinal red.

"Francois-Louis Schmied [was] a highly accomplished printer [publisher/binder/illustrator] best known today for his de luxe editions of classic works of literature…Based in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s and in Morocco in the late 1930s…, Schmied's books' sumptuousness defies easy description and evidences a singular mastery" (Garabedian, M. The Printer in Paris).

"On their first exposure to one of François-Louis Schmied's productions, most Americans…are apt to declare that they have never seen anything like it" (Tabor, S. The World From Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles, p. 136).

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Images courtesy of Sims Reed Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

Three Must-See Bindings.

Three More Must-See Bindings.

Five Must-See Modern French Bindings.
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Italian Big Cheeses At Home In L.A.

By Nancy Mattoon

Parisani d'Ascoli coat of arms (1747),
From the Bourbon Family Archive.
(All Images Courtesy of UCLA Library Special Collections.)

Here's a history pop quiz: Which country, made up of many independent states, was united under a central government first: Italy or the United States of America? Surprisingly, while the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, the Italian city-states weren't joined together under a single ruler, King Victor Emmanuel II, until 1861. (And even then not completely--Rome was among the hold outs.)

Family genealogical table (ca. 18th-19th century),
From The Bourbon Family Archive.

Before that date, Italy was made up of a large and ever-changing group of kingdoms, each with its own royal family. (For example, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Milan, and the Papal States, to name just a few.) And each and every one of those Kings rewarded his most loyal followers with both lands and titles. The result was that just as The Godfather's Corleone family "had a lot of buffers," the Italian royals had a lot of nobles.

Papacy of Clement VIII privilege and indulgence (1595),
From the Bourbon Family Archive.

Researching the many, many noble families of Italy is quite a chore. At one time or another there were about 20 major dynasties ruling from "sovereign houses," at least eight different clans commanding loyalty from "royal palaces," and nine more families governing as "papal nobility." Wikipedia has a page for each of 63 separate "nobles houses of Italy," and that is far from a complete list. All in all, one very large antipasto tray stacked high with Italian big cheeses. (And, as Homer Simpson might say, "Mmmmm, Italian cheese...") But take heart -- a newly acquired collection of historic papers makes a single archive a terrific source for savoring several different slices of Italy's noble past.

Drawing of details of Orsini palazzo in Rome, c. 1717,
From the Orsini Family Papers.

As of February 1, 2011 the Charles E. Young Department of Special Collections at the UCLA Library is home to the Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino Family Archive, a comprehensive collection of documents created between the 14th and 19th centuries by, for, and about this prominent and noble Italian family. Among the collection's contents are civil and ecclesiastical contracts, documents from lawsuits and court cases, wills and post-mortem inventories, genealogies, certificates of nobility, correspondence, and family chronicles. The Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino family can trace its origin and lineage back some 1,200 years to the time of Charlemagne, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, who granted the family its original patent of nobility. One of the clan's most celebrated members was a 16th century Cardinal, Francesco Maria Del Monte. A diplomat and connoisseur of the arts, he was the foremost early patron of the great Italian baroque painter, Caravaggio.

Orsini fiefs on Lake Bracciano, 1690s,
From The Orsini Family Papers.

The Bourbon del Monte di San Faustino Family Archive is the perfect compliment to another, much larger collection already housed in the Charles E. Young Research Library, covering the illustrious Orsini family. Comparable in power and influence to the Medici family, the Orsini produced three popes, 28 cardinals and 33 Roman senators. The Orsini Family Papers take up a whopping 572 archival boxes, and span the years 1150 through 1950. The two archives together give UCLA one of the finest collections of Italian history primary source materials in the United States.

Floorplan of Casa del Monte Lippiano (1807),
From the Bourbon Family Archive.

According to UCLA professor of Italian, Massimo Ciavolella,"The Bourbon del Monte family is among the earliest aristocratic families in Italy, thus an integral part of Italian social history and related to many noble families--the Sforza, the Farnese, the Gonzaga, to name a few, and, of course, to the Orsini. This well-organized archive affords us a look at the workings of the family within in a small Umbrian setting and will inform scholars in the fields of economics, law, prosopography, paleography, geography, diplomatic history and, of course, literature and language." That's almost as many disciplines as there are Italian noble families. Or for that matter, Italian cheeses--Wikipedia's "incomplete list" tops out at around 400 varieties.

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