Beschreibung:

Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone. Nuovamente corretto et con diligentia stampato, Florence: heirs of Filippo di Giunta, 1527, [8], 284 leaves, signatures 2A8 (2A8 blank), 2A8 a-z8 &8 [con]8 [rum]8 A-H8 I12, woodcut Giuntine device to title-page and verso of final leaf, italic types, spaces with printed guide letters, title-page somewhat damp-stained, tipped to initial blank and slightly marked from erasure of 2 old ownership inscriptions, small spot to following leaf 2A2, small damp-stain to lower margins of f3 and s1-2, closed tear in I4 touching a few letters both sides to no effect on legibility, faint tide-mark to final 50 or so leaves, first appearing at head of gutter in quire F, gradually becoming stronger and extending into upper outer corners of text, endpapers sometime renewed, inner hinges tightened. Contemporary Italian binding of dark brown goatskin over pasteboard, sewn on 3 cords, spine with 3 thick raised bands alternating with 4 narrow false bands, compartments with simple floral centrepieces within thick-and-thin blind rules, interlacing rectilinear strapwork design in gilt and blind to covers incorporating central lozenges lettered 'Di Michele da Prato', edges gilt gauffered with ropework pattern, traces of 4 pairs of ties, spine-bands and joints rubbed, headcap torn but largely intact, board-edges slightly rubbed, corners worn, 4to in 8s (21 x 13.6 cm) (Qty: 1) Brunet I 998-999; Gamba (1828) 156 (‘Rarissimo’); Renouard, ‘Notice sur la famille des Junte’, supplement to Annales de l’imprimerie des Alde, (1834), 93; STC Italian p. 110; not in Adams; see further Kirkham et al., eds., Boccaccio: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works, pp. 42-8. The famous 1527 Giunta edition of the Decameron, known as the Ventisettana, with all the points listed by Brunet distinguishing it from the Venetian facsimile edition of 1729 (Adams B2147). ‘There are few books which have acquired such great esteem and value’ (Renouard). Printed in the year in which Florence threw off Medici rule during the War of the League of Cognac, the Ventisettana was the work of several Florentine humanists, who collated Delfino’s edition printed at Venice in 1516 against manuscripts including the important Mannelli copy made in 1382. It superseded all previous editions and quickly acquired immense prestige, serving as the direct model for all subsequent versions until the 1761 Lucca edition, which was based solely on the Mannelli MS but reproduced much of the textual apparatus of the 1527 edition. Provenance: In a superb contemporary Italian binding in the Grolieresque style developed by the Pflug and Ebeleben binder of Bologna, but perhaps exhibiting greater similarity to the work of the Sienese craftsman active c.1520-40 who is identified in Anthony Hobson’s essay ‘A Central Italian Bookseller and Bookbinder’ (Gutenburg-Jahrbuch 2010, pp. 215-20). Hobson emphasises the Pflug and Ebeleben binder’s predilection for curvilinear fillets as opposed to the rectilinear style of the Siena binder. The panelling seen in the present copy is more elaborate than the forms which Hobson describes, but the other features which he identifies as typical of the Sienese binder’s work are much in evidence: ‘With few exceptions all lines cross each other at right angles. The bindings are of goatskin, usually black, but sometimes red or dark olive-brown, over stiff pasteboards. The edges of five of the more elaborately decorated volumes are gilt and gauffered … Nearly all the volumes were fitted with four pairs of ties. They are sewn on three wide bands. The compartments between the bands are decorated with double blind lines in a variety of patterns … The more elaborately decorated covered were given four false bands alternating with the real ones’ (op. cit., p. 215). The Michele da Prato named on the covers is conceivably Michele Modesti da Prato (b.1510), son of Jacopo Modesti (1463-1530), ‘who had been one of the officials [most] closely involved with the Medici