OWNED AND ANNOTATED BY CRUSCA ACADEMICIAN VIERI DE’ CERCHI

T. Livii Patauini […] ex XIIII Decadibus Historiae Romanae ab Urbe condita, Decades, prima, tertia, quarta, & quintae dimidium, singulari cum studio ac iudicio […] Beati Rhenani & Sigismundi Gelenii recognitae ac restitutae […] L. Flori Epitomae in singulos omnium decadum libros. Henrici Loriti Glareani […] annotationes. Laurentii Vallae iudicium de quibusdam apud Liuium locis: […] M. Antonii Sabellici annotatione pauculae. 

Paris, [Michel Vascosan for] Oudin Petit, 1543 [– Michel Vascosan for himself and Oudin Petit, 1542]. 

Two parts in one vol., folio, ff. 1: [xlvii (of xlviii)], 348, [16], 2: 66, [28]; without f. [ii] of paratextual apparatus (Grynaeus’s De utilitate legendae historiae), paper slip pasted over final 8 ll. of part-title (‘D. Erasmus Roterodamus […]’); large historiated woodcut initials; some light foxing, the occasional crease or paper-flaw, closed tear to E1 (touching a few characters) but a very good, wide-margined copy; in eighteenth-century carta rustica over pulpboard, backed with speckled paper; somewhat worn; contemporary and near-contemporary inscriptions ‘Palladi dicatum’, ‘Pietro di Santo Stefano’, and later ‘Vieri de’ Cerchi’ (c. 1620) to title, occasional marginal annotations to text, with 45 additional leaves bound at front and end around 1620 for Vieri de’ Cerchi, those at the end containing manuscript glossae in alphabetical columns, 15-line manuscript note and large fragment of a printed liturgical calandar loosely inserted, nineteenth-century small ink stamp of Gustavo Camillo Galletti to title.

£3800

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T. Livii Patauini […] ex XIIII Decadibus Historiae Romanae ab Urbe condita, Decades, prima, tertia, quarta, & quintae dimidium, singulari cum studio ac iudicio […] Beati Rhenani & Sigismundi Gelenii recognitae ac restitutae […] L. Flori Epitomae in singulos omnium decadum libros. Henrici Loriti Glareani […] annotationes. Laurentii Vallae iudicium de quibusdam apud Liuium locis: […] M. Antonii Sabellici annotatione pauculae. 

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A much-praised edition of Livy’s History, reprinting Vascosan’s 1535 edition and including the philological corpus on Livy by the most established humanists of the time: Rhenanus, Gelenius, Grynaeus, Glareanus, Badius Ascensius, Valla, and Sabellico. 

This copy’s distinction derives from having belonged to Vieri de’ Cerchi (1588–1646), Florentine patrician scholar, senator, and member of several academies, including La Crusca.  His handling of this classic offers a valuable insight into late-Renaissance reading practices.  The text pages contain some marginalia, as expected, ranging from brief notes to scholarly references and in-depth explanations.  Anticipating minute and extensive textual work, however, Vieri must have evaluated the difficulty in retrieving marginalia across such a ponderous body of text and instructed his binder to include substantial blank quires at both ends of the volume.  In these blank quires he then drew columns, each headed with the letters of the alphabet.  Although over two hundred glosses placed within the columns and referring to marginalia in the main body of the text eloquently reveal Vieri’s plan, the columns remain largely unfilled, the unwieldiness of the tome and impracticalities of continuous heavy quire-turning probably having defeated him.  It is tempting almost to hear, on contemplating this volume, the scholar’s grudging concession and his pragmatic adoption of a small-format notebook. 

An earlier inscription, ‘Palladi dicatum’, gives little clue as to the association of this copy with anyone particularly inspired by Athena.  The most recent ownership mark, however, places the book in the possession of another Florentine patrician scholar, Gustavo Camillo Galletti (1805–1868), one of the most remarkable Tuscan bibliophiles and collectors of the nineteenth century. 

See Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship (1908) II, pp. 262-265. 

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