Beschreibung:

Caesar, Gaius Julius. Hoc volumine continentur haec. Commentariorum de bello Gallico libri VIII. De bello civili Pompeiano libri IIII. De bello Alexandrino liber I. Venice: heirs of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, November 1519 [kk8v: January 1518]
The Torres-Bodleian-Fairfax Murray-Ascherson-Abbey-Fürstenberg copy.
A reprint of the Dominican friar Giovanni Giocondo’s 1513 edition of Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars. It contains the original letter by Aldo Manuzio to the reader (dated November 1513), dedicatory letter by Giocondo to Giuliano de’ Medici, and glossary of place names in Latin, with their vernacular equivalents (see lot 222). The woodcuts are printed from a new set of blocks. Those of the Rhine bridge and the defenses of Avaricum (now Bourges), Alexia (Alise-Sainte-Reine), Uxellodunum, and Massilia (Marseille), are loose copies of woodcuts appearing in Filippo Giunta’s Florence edition of 1514. The Aldine edition of 1513 had featured a single map of Gaul, colored by stencil; the Giunta edition offered a different map of Gaul, and introduced a second map of Spain (both uncolored). The two maps in this 1519 edition are considerably more detailed, and depend from different models.
This is one of seven surviving books from the library of Luis Torres (another was offered as Bibliotheca Brookeriana, lot 77). Luis (1495-1553) was the fifth son of an Andalusian Jewish convert, Fernando de Córdoba (d. 1523), who had participated in the reconquest of the city of Málaga from the Muslims in 1487, and afterwards established lucrative businesses in the port. Luis was sent at a young age to Rome, where he steadily acquired offices in the apostolic chancery, and in 1548 was appointed by Pope Paul III as Archbishop of Salerno.
The seven bindings were studied in 1998 by T. Kimball Brooker, who found that they were executed by three different Roman shops. He attributed the binding on this Caesar to an anonymous shop which also worked for a collector whose initials are G.A.C., and possibly for Cardinal Giovanni Salviati (1490-1553).
8vo (163 x 102 mm). Italic type, 30 lines plus headline. collation: A-B8 a-z8 aa-oo8: 312 leaves. Double-page woodcut maps of Gaul and Spain, five woodcut plates, contemporary annotations in ink. (Foxing and browning, marginal tear to D3, wormhole at inner margin.)
binding: Roman black morocco binding (168 x 105 mm), ca. 1540, for Luis I de Torres, central panel formed by lozenge intersecting two circles of double gilt fillets, circles with *L* *T* in gilt, lozenge with title *COMMENT* (upper cover) and *CAESARIS* (lower cover) also in gilt, gilt fleurons in corners, circles and semi-circles, gilt flame tools at corners, spine with three raised and two semi-raised bands, title lettered longitudinally on spine C*O/MM*EM/T*CAE/S*A, stubs from four pairs of ties, edges gilt and gauffered; housed in green cloth box. (Restoration to joints and head of spine.)
provenance: Roman bookseller’s mark (No. 45, written beneath device on title-page) — Luis I de Torres (supralibros) — Bodleian Library, Oxford (ink stamp on title-page; inscription "Bought at Bodleian sale of duplicates, Sotheby’s, 1865" on upper pastedown, but not traced in Sotheby Wilkinson & Hodge sale, 12 April 1865) — Charles Fairfax Murray (booklabel to front pastedown), his sale, Christie Manson & Woods, London, 18 March 1918, lot 62, £10, to Bernard Quaritch (£10), with collation note dated 22 March 1918 — Charles Stephen Ascherson (bookplate to front pastedown) — John Roland Abbey (morocco booklabel to front pastedown), his sale, Sotheby's, London, 21-23 June 1965, lot 171, £100, to Alan G. Thomas — Jean Fürstenberg (booklabel to front pastedown). acquisition: Purchased from Martin Breslauer Inc., New York, 1982. references: UCLA 185; Cataldi Palau 51; Edit16 8155; Renouard 88/11; T. Kimball Brooker, "Who was L.T.?," The Book Collector (1998), 508-519, plate I