Beschreibung:

Huttich, Johann. Imperatorum et Caesarum Vitae, cum Imaginibus ad vivam effigiem expressis. Libellus auctus cum elencho et Iconiis consulum ab Authore. Strassburg: Wolfgang Köpfel, 1534
An iconographic repertory from numismatic sources of the emperors from classical antiquity to Charles V and Ferdinand I, first published at Strasbourg in 1525, and here reprinted with a new appendix (Elenchus Consulum Romanorum) presenting a series of eighty-four woodcuts of consular or Roman republican coins. The designer of the woodcut medallions, cut black on white, is usually identified as Hans Weiditz. The four-part title-border, representing a triumphal procession, was adapted by another artist from the woodcut “Triumphs of Caesar” by Jacobus Argentoratensis.
This copy was formerly in the Spanish royal library and bears on both covers the gilt arms of Prince Philip, only son of Charles V, heir to the Spanish kingdoms and empire, and the later blind-stamped escutcheon of the Escorial (the grille of St Lawrence, to whom the monastery was dedicated). The royal insignia is impressed from a new, simplified block, introduced after 1542, which positioned the arms of Castile and León at the top, and Austria, two Burgundies, Flanders, and Brabant at the bottom of the quartered shield (the crown and the Golden Fleece were applied from separate tools).
Philip’s interest in numismatics had been aroused in 1539, when, aged 12, he received from Antonio de Cardona, viceroy of Sardinia, a box of old coins. In 1540, Archbishop Filippo Archinto sent to him from Rome three shipments of coins and medals, which Philip immediately installed in custom-made walnut cabinets. In 1540, a courtier, Alonso de Rávago, returned from Rome with a pertinent gift, a copy of Andrea Fulvio’s coin book (Rome 1517), bound by Maestro Luigi, its upper cover lettered with Philip’s name, and lower with the donor’s (now Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial, 18-V-6). A year later, the Madrid bookbinder Juan de Medina bound for Philip a copy (now lost) of this 1534 edition of the Imperatorum et Caesarum Vitae. About the same time, the courtier Jorge de Lima presented Philip with yet another copy, this one bound in black goatskin, with a blank shield intended to receive the royal arms (RBME, 17-V-2). It is supposed that since Philip already had the book in his library, Lima’s gift was not rebound with the royal arms. Either of those, or the present copy, might be the one listed (“Imagenes de Emperadores por Huticchius, en un cuerpo”) in an inventory made 14 February 1567 of books sent from the Palace to the Escorial (Antolín y Pajares, “La librería de Felipe II [Datos para su reconstitución],” in Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia 90 [1927], pp. 335–426).
By 1541 the humanist scholar Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella had replaced Juan Martínez Siliceo as the prince’s tutor, and taken charge of the prince’s library. Calvete commissioned the new armorial stamp, and established a uniform style, with the royal arms displayed in the centers of the covers, and a narrow range of decorative motifs. He favored the local binders, of whom two are known by name: Juan Vázquez and Simón Borgoñón. This volume was bound by Juan Vázquez. Gonzalo Sánchez-Molero has published a set of rubbings of tools associated with the shop, among them the armorial block, medallion head, and one of the vegetal rolls used on this binding (La 'Librería rica' de Felipe II: Estudio histórico y catalogación [Madrid 1998], pp. 110–134 [Encuadernaciones platerescas de Juan Vázquez 1541–1548]).
2 parts, 4to (171 x 115 mm. Italic type, lines highly variable. collation: Aa–Bb4 A–X4 Y6, aa–dd4: 114 leaves. Four-piece woodcut title-border, 268 medallion portraits of emperors (including some blank in centers), cut white on black, most enclosed within ornamental border-pieces, a second four-piece woodcut border on L2; section-title for the Elenchus within historiated woodcut frame (block adapted from the Homerus printed by Köpfel, 1525), text within vertical woodcut borders, 84 medallions in the same style, woodcut printer's device on final verso of each part (Y6v, dd4v). (Title-page browned, final leaf with marginal worming, scattered browning and marginal soiling.
binding: Salamanca brown goatskin over thin wooden boards (175 x 120 mm), ca. 1542, by Juan Vázquez, richly gold tooled, 2 border rolls, the outer roll with leafy vegetation in reverse against a field of gold, the inner roll of leafy tendrils, rosette at outer angles of each border, in central panel arms of Felipe II, head in circular wreath above and below, spine with 4 full bands and 5 half bands, quatrefoils in each compartment, traces of 2 clasps, brown-speckled edges. (Spine darkened, extremities rubbed, lacking free endpapers.)
provenance: Felipe II, King of Spain (1527–1598, r. 1556–1598; armorial supralibros) — Real Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial (supralibros, blindstamp on covers, “36” in ink at upper fore-edge) — Sotheby’s, London, 14–18 December 1894, lot 357, purchased by — Maggs Bros., London (£3 18s) — Henry Cady Sturges (1846–1922; Anderson Galleries, New York, 11–13 December 1922, lot 85), purchased by — unidentified owner ($16) — Baron 
Pierre van Zuylen (1881–1977; Sotheby’s, London, 11–14 February 1929, lot 474), purchased by — Maggs Bros, London (£1 1s) — Paul Fontainas (1886–1964; pencil inscriptions “Collection Baron Van Zuylen de Liège Londres Mars 19.29” and “Bibliothèque Paul Fontainas Bruxelles 1942”; De Coen & Louis Moorthamers, Brussels, 31 March 1973, lot 136), purchased by — unidentified owner (FB 100,000) — Librairie Patrick et Elisabeth Sourget, Chartres. acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Patrick et Elisabeth Sourget, 1992. 
references: VD16 H 6474; USTC 665202.