WODHULL’S MERULA
BOUND BY MARIA WIER
MERULA, Giorgio.
Enarrationes Satyrarum Juvenalis.
Treviso, Bartholomaeus Confalonerius, [not before May] 1478.
Chancery folio, ff. [122]; A4 a–o8 p6; roman letter with a few words in Greek, ruled in red throughout, mostly with a double-ruled frame, first and last leaves with a quadruple frame; re-margined at head throughout the volume and at the outer margin of first 7 ff., otherwise a very good copy; bound in late eighteenth-century English red straight-grained morocco in the style of Roger Payne, single gilt fillet border, flat spine lettered directly in gilt with narrow gilt bands, edges gilt and gauffered to a lattice design, marbled endpapers, green ribbon place-marker; a few very minor stains, spine a little faded and creased, two tiny wormholes to lower cover; purchase notes of Michael Wodhull to flyleaf (details of the price erased and rewritten) dated 17 March 1780, and at the end the date when he finished reading, 17 August 1804, bookplate of Bishop John Vertue to front pastedown, small shelflabel at foot of upper cover.
The first book printed by Bartolomeo Confalonieri da Salò in Treviso, Michael Wodhull’s copy, bound and ruled for him by the London binder Maria Wier.
Many of Wodhull’s books were bound in this simple and elegant style; helpfully Wodhull often noted the name of the binder as well as the cost on the flyleaf of his books, though in this case the relevant name seems to have been erased. Numerous bindings were made for him by Roger Payne, who had later worked in some sort of partnership or arrangement with Maria’s husband Richard (d. 1792). The Wiers spent time in the south of France in the 1770s, binding and repairing books for Count Justin MacCarthy Reagh, and afterwards Maria is known to have worked in Edinburgh, repairing books at the Record Office (Foot, Studies in the History of Bookbinding (1978), pp. 100–102). The 1886 Wodhull sale catalogue attributes this binding to her.
Giorgio Merula (1430–1497) was responsible for the editing of significant classical texts for Venetian printers in the 1470s; his notes on the Satires of Juvenal, however, became part of a polemical philological feud with other scholars, including Poliziano and Calderini, which was typical of the early years of print. This is one of two editions from 1478, the other printed in Venice by Gabriele di Pietro, which is considered to have been issued somewhat earlier in the year; the Venetian edition also included Merula’s attack on Calderini’s commentary on Martial, which is not included here. At the time Merula was teaching in Venice at the Scuola di San Marco, and he dedicated this work to Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.
Bartolomeo Confalonieri da Salò produced just four or five works in Treviso before relocating to Venice, as did many of the early Trevisan printers. BMC notes the similarity of his types with Gabriele di Pietro, which might suggest that the two 1478 editions of Merula’s work were part of a collaboration between the two printers.
Provenance:
1. Antoine Benjamin Morin d’Hérouville was in Italy as part of the Danish embassy to the courts of Sicily and Naples between 1763 and 1771. His ‘large and curious library, collected chiefly in Italy’ was sold by Leigh & Sotheby from 9 March 1780 onwards, lot 1624, to ‘Woodhull’.
2. Michael Wodhull (1740–1816), purchased at Leigh’s auction for £0-1-0, with a substantial £2-12-6 paid for the ‘mending, ruling & binding’. His library was sold in London on 11 January 1886, lot 1732, where the binding is attributed to ‘Mrs Weir’.
3. John Vertue (1826–1900), first Catholic bishop of Portsmouth.
HC 11091*; BMC VI 893; GW M22913; Goff M502; BSB-Ink M-339; Bod-inc M-201; ISTC im00502000.
