Beschreibung:

Cicero, Marcus Tullius. M. Tullii Ciceronis Orationum volumen primum in quo multa, quae in aliarum editionum libris corrupte legebantur, ex diligenti vetustorum exemplarium collatione sunt emendata. Venice: Paolo Manuzio, October 1540
Dedication copy of the first edition of the first volume of Paolo Manuzio’s edition of the Orationes, dedicated to Cardinal Benedetto Accolti. This dedication copy is printed on royal paper, and presented to Cardinal Accolti in a binding executed by the Mendoza Binder according to a design supplied by Paolo Manuzio (see Bibliotheca Brookeriana, lot 250 for another book from Accolti’s library).
Paolo Manuzio had commenced over the summer of 1540 a program of publishing newly edited texts of the works of Cicero. He began with the Epistolae familiares (July 1540), and Epistolae ad Atticum (August 1540), and finished with the Orationum volumen secundum and tertium (February-March 1541), De officiis (May 1541), and De philosophia prima pars and volumen secundum (August 1541). Each book contained a dedicatory epistle from Paolo Manuzio. Small numbers of copies were produced for presentation to the dedicatees and to other important personages, on vellum, and on royal paper, the text (composed in octavo) imposed in quarto, resulting in a large-paper copy with exaggerated lower margins.
Over the fourteen months that this set of Cicero was in production, Paolo Manuzio sent special copies to a leading Venetian craftsman, known as the "Mendoza Binder" after his principal client, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. The books were bound, more or less uniformly, according to Paolo Manuzio’s specific instructions, in red goatskin, decorated on upper covers with the painted arms of the recipient, and on lower covers with the painted device of the Aldine press, the dolphin in gold and the anchor in silver. Unusually, the title was lettered on each fore edge, horizontally, in gold letters over a rectangular purple compartment. The publisher was thereby showing to the recipients how the books ought to be stored – vertically, side-by- side with the fore-edge outward. Details of the recipients of the volumes and the locations of surviving copies are provided by T. Kimball Brooker (op. cit., 1997) and Conor Fahy (op. cit., 2005).
Volume 1 (only, of 3), 8vo (206 x 121 mm). Italic type, 30 lines. collation: A-Z8 AA-PP8 QQ4: 308 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso.
binding: Venetian binding (215 x 130 mm), ca. 1540, by the Mendoza Binder for Paolo Manuzio’s use for presentation, red goatskin, gilt fillets forming interlaced shaped rectangular borders and extending into panel as undulating lozenge containing large arabesque at top and bottom and painted arms of Cardinal in center of upper cover and anchor and dolphin on lower cover, 3 full and 4 half bands, in a cloth folding case. (Ends of spine restored, traces of ties, painted centerpieces on sides somewhat faded.)
provenance: Cardinal Benedetto Accolti (1497-1549, armorial on binding) — seventeenth-century inscription "Ex Lib. L. De La Boue I.V.D." [or La Borde?] on title-page) — A. Callet, Paris, stamp on title-page — Librairie Théophile Belin, Paris; René Boisgirard & Louis Giraud-Badin with Charles Bosse, Bibliothèque de Mme Th. Belin: précieux manuscrits à miniatures, livres à figures des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, riches reliures anciennes armoriées, Paris, 19-20 February 1936, lot 40, FF 1100. acquisition: Purchased in France, 1962. references: UCLA 293; Edit16 12249; Renouard 121/8; Brooker, "Paolo Manutio’s Use of Fore-edge Titles," in The Book Collector 46 (1997), pp.27-68 (p.66 no. 1 & figs. 1, 5); Brooker, Index of Best Authors, pp. 13-17; Fahy, "Esemplari su carta reale" and "Royal-paper Copies," in Studies in Bibliography 57 (2005-2006), pp. 85-113 (p.110 no. 29); G. Scott Clemons & H. George Fletcher, Aldus Manutius A legacy more lasting than bronze, 123 (this copy exhibited); A. Hobson, Renaissance Book Collecting (1999), Appendix 5: The Mendoza Binder, no. 233