Beschreibung:

Ferreri-Ventimiglia families. Copies of notarial acts and agreements (executed 1557–1571) documenting the financial affairs of Simone II (1529–1560) and Giovanni III (1559–1619) Ventimiglia, 7th and 8th marchesi di Geraci, and the brothers Bernardo (ca. 1513–1575), Nicolò (d. 1568), and Paolo (d. 1575) Ferreri. Manuscript on paper [Palermo, Sicily, ca. 1572]
This volume preserves the Ferreri family’s copies of agreements they made with the Ventimiglia family, marquises of Geraci, between about 1557 and 1571. Long-standing financial instability had impelled the Ventimiglia to mortgage and eventually surrender their Sicilian feudal estates and even entire baronies to the Ferreri brothers, Ligurian noblemen and entrepreneurs, involved in the wholesale grain trade, tax collecting, and moneylending, from a base at Sciacca in western Sicily. Each of the Ferreri brothers managed a different part of the business, with Paolo (d. 1576) devoting himself with ever greater success to banking and ship-owning. In a long series of transactions, he and his elder brother Nicolò had acquired loans secured by Ventimiglia properties, and by 1572 Giovanni III Ventimiglia was forced to sell his feudal estates of Pollina and San Mauro to Paolo, and a year later, to accept the return of those fiefs in exchange for the baronies of Pettineo and Migaido (Cancila, I Ventimiglia di Geraci (1258–1619), [Palermo, 2016]).
The eldest of the three brothers, Bernardo, returned to Savona about 1547, where he built a palace in the Via Quarda Superiore (afterwards Grassi Lamba Doria), leaving Nicolò and Paolo in Sicily to manage the business. Bernardo came back to Sicily in 1567 during a credit crisis; however, he was unable to save Nicolò, who was bankrupted, and executed under torture in 1568 by order of the Viceroy, Francesco Ferdinando d’Ávalos, Marquis de Pescara. Paolo continued to prosper and in 1571 he commenced building a palace in Palermo. Upon Paolo’s death (28 December 1575), his estates and the barony of Pettineo passed to the elder of his two daughters, Geromima, who (by papal dispensation) married in 1580 her cousin (Bernardo’s son, Marcantonio), securing thereby the family wealth. The Sicilian nobility often repaid loans with marriage contracts, and so, in 1599, Paolo’s other daughter, Violante, married Simone Ventimiglia. 
Eight volumes of documents concerning the Ferrari family’s financial affairs have been seen in the market. This and three other volumes have the Ferreri coat of arms within a cartouche in the centers of the covers; another has the initials “B.F.” (Bernardo Ferreri) at the top of its upper cover. The remaining three bindings have a center ornament composed of four fleurons surrounded by stars, and no external sign of Ferreri ownership. 
The bindings on these eight volumes fall into three groups, with no links between them. Bindings in the largest group (see list below, nos. 2, 4, 5, 6) have two tools in common: a palmette leaf (used to fill a border); and a fleuron (used to compose a center ornament on 2, 5, 6; placed at corners of the border on 2, 5, 6; placed elsewhere amongst swirling stems on 2, 4, 5). Only no. 4 of this group displays the Ferreri arms (D’oro a tre bande d’azzurro). The bindings in the second group (nos. 1, 3, 7) have in common a center block containing painted arms of the Ferreri family (1, 3); a border filled with leafy branches (3, 7); a fleuron (repeated at inner corners of the frame on 3, 7); a triple-dot tool in the background (1, 3, 7). No image is available for the binding in the third group (no. 8), which De Marinis described as “Marr. castano; sui piatti, in alto, le iniziali B.F. Bindelle di seta verde; taglio inciso.”
Judging by available descriptions, no document in these eight volumes postdates the death of Bernardo Ferreri (1575). One binding (8) probably was commissioned by Bernardo, as it bears his initials on the cover. Another (2)—containing contracts for purchases Bernardo made of grain and land from Paolo in 1571–1572, and also copies of Paolo’s testament (3 December 1571), as well as his own (28 August 1572)—may also have belonged to Bernardo. The remaining six volumes house mostly documents relating either to Nicolò and Paulo’s transactions, or to Paolo’s transactions alone, with Giovanni III Ventimiglia and his widowed mother, Maria Antonia (1539–1585), who held the right (ius luendi) of repurchase of the mortgaged estates. A post-mortem inventory of Paolo’s chattels, conducted by the Palermitan notary Giacomo Vacante, 21 March 1576, is said to list 59 volumes of documents relating to his and Nicolò’s business activities, each composed of about 200 folios, of which some were “libri” and the rest “giornale” (presumably day-ledgers). It may be that these eight volumes were once part of the same business archive.
When they began to leak onto the market in the mid-1950s, Anthony Hobson considered these bindings to be products of a Sicilian workshop (1956), despite the lack of comparable examples. Frederick Adams soon opined that the tools were Venetian (1958), and De Marinis, in his entry for the present volume (1966), embroidered that argument. Howard Nixon was undecided (1971), wondering whether one group might be Venetian and the other perhaps Sicilian, decorated with tools transported there from Venice. Mirjam Foot favored Venice (1978, 2010). Hobson’s final comment (1989) was that all the bindings must be Venetian, or all Sicilian.
Although some volumes contain numerous blank leaves (44 in no. 1, 22 in no. 2, about 30 in 3, 149 in no. 4, etc.), the conjecture that these might have been “blank books”, obtained in Venice, or elsewhere, with the documents copied in later, is untenable. Small losses caused by the binder’s knife (in no. 1), the folding and docketing of the quires (in no. 2), together with other evidence, prove that the documents were already written when bound in the volume. Since is difficult to imagine that the documents were transcribed anywhere but in Palermo—indeed, several in no. 6 are attested “facta Collatione cum originale” by the Palermitan notary, Giovanni Domenico Licciardi—it follows that they were either bound locally or transported from Sicily to the Italian peninsula for binding. The Ferreri were shipowners; however, their routes were directed towards Spain and towards Genoa and Lyon, not Venice.
The cataloguers of these volumes have given little information about the watermarks in the paper. The endleaves of (1) are reported to be a paper with watermark of “a crescent with lunar penumbra surmounted by a trefoil cross, accompanied by the letters AI, very similar to Briquet no. 5249,” a paper of “indisputably Genoese origin” (Adams, p. 37). The watermark in the endpapers of (6) is a circle, charged with three birds, surmounted by a cross and accompanied by the letters “A I”, not recorded by Briquet, but probably from the same maker as Briquet 5249.
Several documents in the present volume (4) and in (6) are written on a paper with a large glove or gantelet mark with cinquefoil and initials “M J”, another Genoese paper (Briquet 343). Similar marks with (and without) the letter “A” occur in the present volume (4). The watermarks of a crescent and cross and a circle charged with three birds have not been observed.
Folio (301 x 210 mm). Manuscript on paper, 256 leaves, written in a fine chancery hand on both sides of the first 107 leaves (the others are blank).
binding: Italian (probably Sicilian, although Venice and Genoa have also been suggested) olive morocco (305 x 216 mm), 1570s, for a member of the Ferreri family, profusely gilt, on both covers the centered Ferreri arms in a circular field formed by a wreath and dotted with stars, in the central panel an overall pattern produced by an arabesque tool of a curved tendril ending in an empty leaf, interspersed with stars, rosettes, and a solid fleuron, broad border formed by a large floral and a small leafy tool and gilt and blind fillets, rosettes at outer corners; on spine 5 full and 6 half bands, blind lines in compartments, in centers gilt rosette, at head and tail gilt cross-hatchings, 4 pairs of original blue fabric ties, edges gilt and richly gauffered to a floral arabesque design. (Slightest rubbing at extremities, small scrape at top right corner of front cover, but essentially without flaw.) Green cloth folding-case (broken). 
provenance: Bernardo Ferreri (d. 1575), or another member of his family — Martin Breslauer, London (Catalogue 90, [1958], item 36 & Pl. 19, £350); Catalogue 92, [1960], item 103 & Pl. 27, £350) — Jean Fürstenberg (1890–1982) — Martin Breslauer Inc., New York (Catalogue 104/II [1981], item 172, $16,000). acquisition: Purchased from Martin Breslauer Inc., 1991. 
references: Adams, Eighth Annual Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York, 1958), pp. 38–38 (p.37); Exposition de reliures de la Renaissance: collection Jean Furstenberg : 30 September 1961 (Paris, 1961), no. 51 Musée d’art et d’histoire, Collection Jean Furstenberg : 3 mai–5 juin 1966 (Geneva, 1966), no. 71; De Marinis, Die italienischen Renaissance-Einbände der Bibliothek Fürstenberg (Hamburg, 1966), pp. 174–175; for the Ferreri-Ventimiglia business archives, see: Filangeri, “Il palazzo di Paolo Ferreri a Palermo” in Atti della Accademia di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Palermo, Parte seconda: Lettere, fifth series, 15 (1994–1995), pp. 121–170.