A Genoese Panel-Stamped Binding From a Corsican Convent
GEREMIA, Pietro.
Opus. Sermones in adventum Domini. Sermones de peccato. Sermones de fide. Sermones de penitentia. Sermones de oratione. Sermones dominicales per totum annum. Sermones de sanctis. [(Colophons:) Brescia, Giacomo Britannico, 8 October 1502.]
Six parts in one vol., 4to, ff. xliv, lxii, lxviii, ‘xxxvii’ (recte xxxviii), l, xviii, ‘xl’ (recte cxl); woodcut initials; light marginal damp-staining to final quire, AAA3–6 misbound, small wormhole to inner margin of quires HHH–III and AA, final leaf torn at inner margin, but a good copy; bound in contemporary Genoese blind panel-stamped sheep over wooden boards, the panel containing a vase of lilies with text around the frame naming Viviano da Varese, remains of clasps to fore-edge, boards lined with manuscript waste from a late thirteenth-century Italian Breviary on vellum, sewn on 3 split tawed thongs; worn and rubbed, with sympathetic repairs to spine and lower corner of front board; early ownership inscription ‘Iste liber est […] theologie doctoris […] dōni thome de […] 1515 die pa maij’ to title (deleted in ink), subsequent inscriptions ‘Spectat ad Conventus S. Franci Bonifacij’ and ‘Ex libris fris Matthæi de Bonifo […]’ (see below), sixteenth-century annotations to CCC7v and BB4r–v.
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Opus. Sermones in adventum Domini. Sermones de peccato. Sermones de fide. Sermones de penitentia. Sermones de oratione. Sermones dominicales per totum annum. Sermones de sanctis.
First edition of Geremia’s sermons, in a Genoese binding made for the cartolaio (stationer) Viviano da Varese, with early Corsican provenance.
Pietro Geremia (1399–1452) was a notable Dominican preacher from Palermo; in the sermons on saints, one is about St Cita (or Zita) of Lucca, the patroness of Geremia’s convent in Palermo. The printer of this volume (one of two Britannico brothers who were printers) had two brothers in the Dominican order, which led to the production of numerous volumes of Dominican sermons from their presses; one of the brothers, Benedetto, edited this volume and wrote the preface.
Several early sixteenth-century panel-stamps from Genoa are recorded; Hobson lists seven, two of which name Viviano. The text around the panel stamp provides Viviano’s name and his address, Carubeo Fili in Genoa (now Vico del Filo), the booksellers’ quarter. This panel stamp is recorded by Hobson on fourteen bindings, dating from fourteenth-century manuscripts to a 1527 Hagenau imprint; the latter, in brown goatskin and now in the National Art Library, is nigh on identical to the present binding. Another Genoese panel-stamped binding recorded by Hobson was in the Capuchin convent of Bastia (Corsica).
Provenance:
1. The volume belonged at an early date to one Thomas, a doctor of theology, with his ownership inscription dated 1 May 1515; the Franciscan convent identified in subsequent inscriptions is most likely that at Bonifacio in Corsica.
2. J. & J. Leighton, Catalogue of early printed, & other interesting books [1905?], item 2491.
We have located only one copy in North America, at Illinois, and none in the UK, though a copy of a variant, with a different setting of the title-page, is at the University of Pennsylvania.
EDIT16 CNCE 20705; USTC 832290. See Hobson, Decorated Bookbindings in Renaissance Italy, Genoa: 2(g); see also Goldschmidt, Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings, pp. 68–70 (and plate CIV).