Beschreibung:

Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius. M. Fabii Quintiliani Institutionum oratoriarum libri XII. Eiusdem Declamationum liber. Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe, 1538. Bound with:
Guillaume Philandrier, Gulielmi Philandri Castilioniei Castigationes, atque Annotationes pauculae in XII libros institutionum M. Fab. Quintiliani, specimen quoddam futurorum in eosdem commentariorum. Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe, 1535
A new edition of the humanist Guillaume Philandrier’s edition of Quintilian’s rhetorical treatises, Institutio and Declamationes, originally printed by Josse Bade at Paris in 1531, and bound here with the first edition of Philandrier’s corrections and notes to the text of the Institutio, presented as the first instalment of a full commentary. The second work is dedicated to the Bishop of Rodez, Georges d’Armagnac, who Philandrier (1505–1563) accompanied on diplomatic missions to Venice (1536–1539) and Rome (1540–1545), afterwards publishing similar philological Annotationes on Vitruvius’ De Architectura (1544).
In 1998, T. Kimball Brooker studied a group of seven Roman bindings in brown or black goatskin, with the initials L.T. and other decoration in gold on their covers. All are on Greek and Latin classical texts (six are Aldine press editions), printed between 1503 and 1538. The quality of the bindings suggested to him a wealthy patron. The presence on each binding of a gold-tooled title running down the spine suggested a collector within a small circle in Rome that had adopted the modern method of book storage, of standing books upright on shelves, side by side, with their spines outward. From this Brooker surmised that L.T. had probably amassed a large library.
In one of the L.T. books, a copy of the 1503 Aldine Euripides (now in Bibliotheca Brookeriana, to be offered in our rooms next year), a partially deleted inscription at the head of its title-page reads “[name cut away] D. Ludovicus de Torres hoc munere [a few words obliterated] Ann. MDLXX Cal. Sept.,” indicating that one Luis de Torres had presented the volume in September 1570 to a person whose name was subsequently excised. After investigating the De Torres family, Brooker concluded that “L.T.” on the cover was Luis de Torres (1495–1553), and the “Ludovicus de Torres” who gave the book away was his nephew, Luis II de Torres (1533–1584). The identity of the recipient remains a mystery.
Luis I de Torres was the fifth son of an Andalusian Jewish convert, Fernando de Córdoba (d. 1523), who had participated in the reconquest of the city of Málaga from the Muslims in 1487, and afterwards established lucrative businesses in the port. Fernando married first Dona Inés Fernández, by whom he had six children, all given the surname Torres. Nothing is known of Luis’s education. At an uncertain date, Luis travelled to Rome, where he came under the protection of the lawyer Gonzalo Fernández de Ávila, Canónigo and Chantre of the cathedral of Málaga, nephew and heir of Pedro Díaz de Toledo, bishop of Málaga (1487–1499). A converted Jew, Gonzalo had fled from Málaga to Rome under inquisitorial pressure, arriving there in 1507. By 1518, he had been adopted by Cardinal Raffaele Sansoni Riario (1461–1521), bishop of Málaga.
Through Gonzalo’s influence, Luis obtained in 1518 an office in the apostolic chancery (scriptor brevium, held until 1538); in 1527, he was appointed secretarius (held until 1542). When Gonzalo died, in 1527, Luis was named in his testament as universal heir, thereby adding the valuable Díaz de Toledo properties in the bishopric of Málaga to his already substantial fortune. Luis afterwards formed a new attachment to Cesare Riario, Bishop of Málaga (1518–1540), administering assets and resolving lawsuits with the Cabildo of Málaga. He acquired two additional offices in the papal chancery, those of scriptor cancellarie in 1529 (held until 1542) and magister registri cancellarie in 1537 (held until 1550). In 1541, Luis was involved in lawsuits relating to the tithes of the collegial church of Antequera, and in 1543–1546 in disputes between the Conde de Ureña and Cabildo of Málaga over tithes of Archidona, Olvera and Montejícar. Luis had begun in 1542 to acquire properties on the south side of the Piazza Navona, and about 1550 he commissioned the architect Pirro Ligorio to design a new palace incorporating the older structures. In 1548, on the resignation of Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi, Pope Paul III appointed Luis as Archbishop of Salerno, permitting him to take possession “litteris non expedites.” Luis died in Rome on 13 August 1553, aged 58, and was interred initially in the twelfth-century Roman church of S. Maria Dominae Rosae, then in the newly-built funerary chapel of the De Torres family in S. Caterina de’ Funari, and ultimately (according to his testamentary wishes) in the family chapel in Málaga cathedral.
Brooker assigned the seven bindings which bear L.T.’s initials to three different Roman shops. Although this Quintilianus is structurally different—the only binding of the group with the goatskin drawn over wooden boards, and the only one to have clasps (these features presumably required by its bulk)—it is decorated by the same kit of tools and handle-letters as three others: a 1503 Aldine Euripides, a 1523 Aldine Silius Italicus, and a 1523 Aldine Scriptores de re rustica; all three are in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana and will be offered in future sales. This shop also bound for an unidentified owner who used an impresa with the Horatian motto “Si fractus illabatur orbis”(A. Hobson, Abbey, p. xxxvi; Hobson, “Some Sixteenth-Century Buyers of Books in Rome and Elsewhere,” pp. 69–71).
2 works volumes in one, 8vo (172 x 121 mm). (I) In 2 parts, italic type, 32 lines plus headline. collation: a–z8 A–Q8 r4 (-r4), aa–pp8 qq4: 339 (of 440) leaves (lacking blank r4). Title-page and section-title with Gryphe's woodcut device, woodcut initials. (II) Italic type, 32 lines plus headline. collation: a–e8 f4 (-f4): 43 (of 44) leaves (lacking blank f4). Gryphe's woodcut device on title-page. (Some browning and soiling, a bit of marginal dampstaining at end.)
binding: Roman dark brown goatskin over thin wooden boards (179 x 127 mm), ca. 1540, by the Torres Binder for Luis de Torres, outer frame of 2 gilt fillets containing repeated vine and leaf tool, gilt leafy fleuron at outer angles, gilt trefoil at inner corners, gilt cartouche composed of elongated leaves and double volutes, in center of upper cover “.M.F./QVINT/ILIAN/VS.” and lower cover “.L.T.,” spine with 3 bands, gilt title running from head to tail, 2 clasps (possibly later) catching on upper cover, edges gilt and gauffered. (Spine and corners restored.) 
provenance: Luis I de Torres (supralibros), by descent to — Luis II de Torres, his nephew, who gave the book to — unidentified owner (recipient’s name cut away from gift inscription at head of title-page) — “Bernardino Mancini, Perugia” (inscription, ca. 1700, on endleaf) — Guido Vianini Tolomei (d. 1994). acquisition: Purchased from Fiammetta Soave, Rome, 1995.
references: (I) FB 84127; USTC 157251; Baudrier, VIII, p.117; Gültlingen, V, p.86: 475; (II) FB 82790; USTC 146841; Baudrier, VIII, p.43; Gültlingen, V, p.62: 311; for the binding, see T. Kimball Brooker, Upright Works: The Emergence of the Vertical Library in the Sixteenth Century, Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1996, pp. 811–814 (p. 814 & Fig. 77b); Brooker, “Who was L.T.? Part I,” in The Book Collector 47 (1998), pp. 508–518 (p. 509, no. 6) & Fig. 4b.