Bound for Scipione Borghese
ACQUAVIVA, Claudio.
Meditationes in Psalmum XLIV, & CXVIII. Rome, Bartolomeo Zanetti, 1616.
12mo, pp. 546, [28], [2, blank]; title printed within typographic border with woodcut Jesuit device, final leaf with small woodcut printer’s device, full-page woodcut of King David to p. 10, woodcut initials, typographic headpieces and ornaments; tiny hole to foot of first few leaves, light dampstaining to foot of last few quires, occasional very light foxing, withal a very good copy; bound in contemporary Roman vellum gilt with the arms of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, spine gilt with Borghese emblems of a crowned eagle and a dragon, yapp fore-edges with vestigial ties, edges gilt; a little rubbed, spine slightly dust-soiled with manuscript lettering (now faded), short split to spine.
First edition of these Jesuit meditations on two of the Psalms, a copy bound in the Soresini workshop for Cardinal Scipione Borghese.
The text contains meditations on Psalms 44 and 118 by the Jesuit general Claudio Acquaviva (1543–1615), who was responsible for the great expansion of the Jesuit order and its educational activities of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He died in January 1615, and this volume contains a preface by his successor Muzio Vitelleschi dated December of the same year, commemorating Acquaviva’s contribution to the Order. Another edition was printed in Cologne, also in 1616, with a different preface addressed to Ferdinand, Archbishop of Cologne.
This volume was most likely bound by the workshop of Baldassarre Soresini, which Foot refers to as the Borghese Master. The Soresini family of binders were active in Rome from the late sixteenth century until the mid-seventeenth century. They produced numerous volumes for the Borghese family; an elaborate binding in red morocco made for Paul V is illustrated in Legature papali, item 171, on a 1613 imprint, and bears the same winged cherub’s head and dolphin-headed swirl tools. The same winged cherub’s head, cardinal’s hat, and eagle are illustrated in plate I of Legatura romana barocca 1565–1700; items 18 and 37 show two other bindings made for Scipione, one of which also has just three rows of pendant tassels on the binding (a cardinal usually has four rows).
Provenance:
Bound for Scipione Borghese (1577–1633), the papal nephew appointed a cardinal as soon as his uncle was elected Pope as Paul V in 1605. Scipione amassed a fortune from his privileged position, as well as perhaps the best art collection of the time, much of which survives today at the Villa Borghese in Rome. His library was sold in 1829 with the rest of the family library, though this volume has not been identified in the sale catalogue.
USTC 4022227; not in BM STC Italian. See Foot, The Henry Davis Gift I (1978), pp. 324–336.