Miniature Giovio in a Limp Vellum Gilt Wrapper
GIOVIO, Paolo.
Historiarum sui temporis. Tomus primus … ex Italico Latinus factus … Lyon, heirs of Sébastien Gryphe, 1561.
16mo, pp. 1144, [78 (index)], without final blank leaf; woodcut printer’s device to title-page, woodcut initials and headpieces; last few leaves a little creased with light staining, final verso dusty, otherwise a fine copy; bound in a contemporary French limp vellum gilt wrapper, two small leafy tools stamped back to back in centre of covers within a single gilt fillet frame, flat spine with five gilt leafy bands and small quatrefoil stamp in compartments, foredge flaps, edges gilt; binding somewhat soiled and rubbed; ink stamp of the Bibliothèque du Grand Séminaire de Caen to title-page, g3r, and final verso, and their stamped accession number 14,556 to head of title-page.
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Historiarum sui temporis. Tomus primus … ex Italico Latinus factus …
The first Lyon pocket edition of Giovio’s history of his own time, in a charming gilt limp vellum binding.
Paolo Giovio (1483–1552), in his capacity as bishop, was present at many of the significant moments of sixteenth-century Italy, and this history aimed to place Italian events within a wider European context. Although not much revered as a historian, both at the time and today, his account of his own times contains significant first-hand information and an analytical account of relations with the Ottoman Empire; the present volume contains details of the 1535 conquest of Tunis.
This is the first of three volumes, containing books 1–18, first printed in Florence in 1550, where Giovio was living at the time. The present edition retains the original preface from Andrea Alciato to Giovio and Giovio’s dedication to Cosimo de’ Medici, as well as Benedetto Varchi’s verse letter at the end of the text; it also contains helpful indexes of places and events.
USTC 153152; von Gültlingen V, 1456 (both for all three volumes).