Beschreibung:

Bible—Italian. La Biblia la quale in se contiene i sacrosanti libri del Vecchio & Nuouo Testamento, i quali ti apporto, christianissimo lettore, tradotti da la hebraica & greca uerita in lingua toscana, nuouamente corretta & con ogni diligentia stampata. Con le concordantie di tutta essa scrittura santa, et li summari de ciascun capitolo. Et con due tauole, l’una delle quali mostra i luoghi & l’ordine di quella, & l’altra dichiara tutte le materie che si trattono in essa, rimettendo a’suoi luoghi i lettori. Cosa nuova et utilissima a tutti i christiani. Venice: Girolamo Scoto, 1547
A volume from the library of Paolo Giordano Orsini (1541–1585), the much aligned duca di Bracciano, suspected of murdering both his first wife, Isabella de’ Medici, daughter of Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo, and the husband of his mistress, Vittoria Accoramboni. This Bible belongs to a group of some twenty-six volumes bound for the fifteen-year-old Paolo Giordano during his first and only visit to Paris, in May–September 1556, when he accompanied the apostolic legate Cardinal Carafa to secure an alliance with Henri II against the Spanish. With the exception of a copy of Erasmus’s Adagiorum (Basel 1551), the books are all in Italian, three printed at Florence, the others at Venice, the earliest book in 1522, the latest in 1554. The books most likely were obtained in Italy and taken to France for binding.
The bindings are generally brown goatskin, the covers decorated either with strapwork ornament (often enameled or silvered), or with gilt corner and centerpieces. Each has Paolo Giordano’s armorial gilt stamp, the shield divided per pale, showing on the viewer’s left the Orsini symbols of the rose and eel, and on the right the sei palle of the House of Medici, lettered around “Pavl Iordan Vrs D. Aragon.” Working partly from illustrations, Mirjam Foot assigned nine bindings to an unidentified Parisian atelier, designated “Wotton Binder C” on account of its work for the English bibliophile Thomas Wotton, and another binding, with hesitation, to a craftsman known as the Cupid’s Bow Binder. This Bible can be assigned to Wotton’s Binder C.
The Orsini bindings were first studied by G. D. Hobson, who correctly recognized them as French, not Italian; afterwards by Tammaro De Marinis; then by Anthony Hobson, who claimed knowledge of twenty bindings made for Paolo Giordano. A list of twenty-four bindings was published in 2016 by Federico and Livio Macchi. A remboîtage—described in Zisska & Lacher, Katalog 62, Munich, 6 November 2013, lot 403—can be added to Macchi’s census. 
Anthony Hobson believed that Paolo Giordano was “no bibliophile” because he “did not trouble to acquire any bindings during the last thirty years of his life.” A recent study by Barbara Furlotti, based on inventories found in Roman archives, proves that Hobson was mistaken. After his marriage to Isabella (1558), Paolo Giordano became determined to replicate the splendor of the Medici court. He committed himself to an orgy of spending, collecting and commissioning paintings, tapestries, antiquities, sculpture, and especially furnishings, accumulating in Rome and at his castle at Bracciano huge quantities of table silver, embroideries, silk wall and bed hangings, rugs and pillows, in luxurious fabrics, color-coordinated, and usually trimmed with silk. That taste for varied and brilliant colors extended into Paolo Giordano’s library, where—on the evidence of these inventories—he shelved books bound in, red, yellow, and green velvet, in red, green, blue, and white leather, some bichrome, many with red or blue silk ties. On the whole, these are quite unusual preferences for bookbindings, and suggest strong bibliophile tastes.
The earliest of the inventories itemizes some seventy-five books which Paolo Giordano brought to Bracciano in 1575. Many entries are truncated or so abbreviated that the text and edition cannot be identified; however, five or six entries may correspond to works which Paolo Giordano gave in 1556 to Parisian bookbinders; one of these, “La Biblia la quale contiene il sacro santi libri,” might refer to this copy of Antonio Bruccioli’s translation of the Bible. Confounding Hobson’s expectations, many of the Italian books were first published years after Paolo Giordano’s return from Paris, and twenty-six entries describe books in Latin. The disposition of Paolo Giordano’s artworks after his death has been widely investigated; however, nothing is yet known of the immediate fate of his books. Only a few volumes have recognizable evidence of ownership before the nineteenth century, notably Giovio’s La seconda parte dell’historie del suo tempo (Florence, 1553), which is said to contain the ink-stamp of a Medici Palace library (Macchi no. 17).
4to (216 x 155 mm). Roman type, 50 lines plus headline, in double columns.  collation: π4 A–Z8 AA–ZZ8 AAA–KKK LLL12, Aa–Oo8 Pp4: 580 leaves (LLL12 blank). Historiated and floriated woodcut initials. (Title-page supplied in facsimile [by at least 1897, when so described by Quaritch], some browning and soiling, small burnhole to A1 costing a couple of letters.)
binding: Contemporary Parisian polished calf (224 x 168 mm), by Wotton’s Binder C for Paolo Giordano Orsini, gold- tooled and enameled, single gilt fillet around sides with small circle at corners, panel tooled with a design of foliate arabesques in a flowing architectonic interlace pattern, outlined in gold and enameled in black, silver and blue, a few open and azured tools, central armorial stamp of Orsini impaled with Medici encircled by PAVL IORDAN VRS. D. ARAGON; traces of 2 pairs of ties, spine with 5 full and 2 half bands, compartments containing 3 marguerites arranged horizontally and enameled black, blue, black, edges gilt and gauffered. (Joints and other extremities restored.) Red morocco folding-case gilt, chemise, by Sangorski & Sutcliffe.
provenance: Paolo Giordano Orsini, duca di Bracciano (supralibros; possibly inventory of Paolo Giordano Orsini’s books brought to Bracciano, 18 August 1575: “La Biblia la quale contiene il sacro santi libre” [inventory transcribed by Furlotti, p. 285]) — Giovanni Gancia, Brighton & Paris ( Delbergue-Cormont & Librairie Bachelin Deflorenne, Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de M. G. Gancia composée en partie de livres de la première bibliothèque du Cardinal Mazarin et d’ouvrages précieux, Paris, 27 April–2 May 1868, lot 4), purchased by — Ricardo Heredia y Livermore, conde de Benahavís (1831–1896; [FF125], exlibris; Maurice Delestre & Ém. Paul, L. Huard et Guillemin, Bibliothèque de M. Ricardo Heredia, comte de Benahavis. Première partie, Paris, 22–30 May 1891, lot 32 (“Le titre de ce volume a été très habilement refait. …”), purchased by — unidentified owner (FF 145) — Bernard Quaritch, London (Catalogue 166 [1897], item 389. £21, “having the title in facsimile”) — Sotheby’s, London, 17–21 December 1898, lot 598, purchased by — Bernard Quaritch, London (£6) — Michael Tomkinson (1841–1921; exlibris; Sotheby’s, London, 3–7 July 1922, lot 1084), purchased by) — Beauchamp (£7 5s) — Sotheby’s, London, 5– 7 February 1923, lot 492, purchased by — Tomkinson (£5) [perhaps Herbert (1873–1951), son of Michael Tomkinson (1841–1921), retrieving a book from the dispersed library?] — Sotheby’s, London, 8–9 November 1960, lot 393), purchased by — Proctor (£160) — Henry Bradley Martin (1906–1988; exlibris; Sotheby’s, New York, 14 June 1990, lot 3373). acquisition: Purchased at the Martin sale through Martin Breslauer Inc.
references: Edit16 5772; USTC 803217; Spini, “Bibliografia delle opere di Antonio Brucioli” in La Bibliofilía 42 (1940), pp. 129–180; Lumini, La Bibbia: edizioni del XVI secolo (Florence, 2000), no. 81 (as fifth edition of Bruccioli’s Bible); for the binding and the books of Paolo Giordano Orsini, see Federico & Livio Macchi, “Le legature francesi di Paolo Giordano Orsini d’Aragona: Storia di un personaggio e di una legatura” in Misinta: Rivista di Bibliofilia e Cultura 23 (June 2016), pp. 143–49 (p. 147, no. 22); Foot, The Henry Davis Gift … Volume I (London, 1978), pp. 150, 152–154 (“Appendix V: Bindings by Wotton’s Binder III [Wotton binder C] for other collectors”); G. D. Hobson, “Une reliure au Musée d’Art et d’Histoire” in Genava 9 (1931), pp. 204–207; De Marinis, Appunti e ricerche bibliografiche (Milan, 1940), pp. 129–131 (“IX. Legature Francesi del Cinquecento in Raccolte Italiane,” nos. 43–46; A. Hobson, French and Italian Collectors and their Bindings Illustrated from Examples in the Library of J. R. Abbey (Oxford 1953), no. 18; A. Hobson, catalogue entry for Sotheby’s sale, 8–9 November 1960, lot 393 (referring to 21 Orsini bindings, including one remboîtage); Furlotti, A Renaissance Baron and his Possessions: Paolo Giordano I Orsini, Duke of Bracciano (1541–1585) (Turnhout, 2012), pp. 283—291.