Apollo and Pegasus: An enquiry into the formation and dispersal of a Renaissance library

4to (31 cm), frontispiece, XVIII, 252 pp, 25 plates. Publisher’s cloth and dust jacket. This scholarly study examines a distinctive group of Italian Renaissance bindings decorated with a plaquette depicting Apollo and Pegasus, which has attracted the attention of scholars and collectors since it was first identified in print by Thomas Frognall Dibdin in 1817. Anthony Hobson subjects the 144 recorded volumes associated with this group to close and systematic scrutiny, combining bibliographical, stylistic, and historical analysis. He convincingly demonstrates that the bindings belonged to a young owner whose identity had not previously been connected with them, thereby reshaping earlier assumptions about their provenance. The author explores in detail the circumstances and chronology of the library’s formation, as well as the workshops and craftsmen responsible for producing the bindings. Further chapters address the relationship between binders and the book trade in sixteenth-century Italy and examine the selection of titles and editions in the collection, paying particular attention to the extent to which it reflects a discerning taste for fine printing. The final chapter traces the dispersal of the library, situating the collection within the broader history of Renaissance book collecting and survival.…