The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J.R. Abbey

Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling in a red label and a gilt title on the upper board and dusty pink endpapers; 187pp., top edges yellow, 31pp. of monochrome plates and 7pp. of full colour plates including the frontispiece. Somewhat shaken, else near fine in a similar price-clipped dustwrapper, now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Postage quoted is for a standard format octavo book. Final charges may vary depending on size and weight. The manuscripts catalogued and described here form a particularly interesting series since about a third of them have colophons which give their date, the name of the scribe or the place of writing. A number of others have indications of their original owners. The majority are of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and amongst the original owners are some of the great Renaissance patrons of learning and collectors of books, the Medici, the Visconti, the Aragonese kings of Naples, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, Popes Sixtus IV, Julius II, Leo X and Cardinal Bessarion. Works signed by or attributable to some of the most important humanistic scribes are included, such as Piero Strozzi, Nicolaus Riccius Spinosus, Sigismondo dei Sigismondi, Pierantonio Sallando, Gioacchino de Gigantibus, Bartolomeo Sanvito, Fernando Ruano and Jo Nicolai de Confluentia. This is a scholarly work transcending the requirements of even an excellent catalogue. The 63 manuscripts described here were acquired between 1934 and 1966. Most regions of Italy are represented though the major contingent originate in Tuscany; the texts are mostly in Latin, some in Italian. Each manuscript is illustrated by one or more full-sized monochrome plates.…