SILIUS ITALICUS, Caius (25-101 A.D.). De Bello Punico . Lyons: Sebastian Gryphius, 1547. 16 o (121 x 71 mm). Italic type. Printer's woodut device on title. Ruled in red throughout. (Minor dampstaining to corners at front, printing flaw to y3 affecting 4 letters.) Contemporary French, possibly Lyonese, painted entrelac binding of brown calf, covers tooled in gold with double fillet border and interlacing strapwork around which curl tendrils terminated by open leaf and petal tools, at center an annular cartouche enclosing a pair of "cupid's bow"-like tools, the strapwork and open tools painted green, greenish-blue, and white, four small solid flower tools and four star tools in interstices, spine with four raised bands and two half bands, the 7 compartments tooled alternately with single very small fleur-de-lys and crowned dolphin tools, board edges gilt with pairs of tiny flower tools and a fillet, edges gauffred and gilt (corners, joints and extremities worn, much of the paint rubbed away); modern folding cloth box. Provenance : 19th-century notes in German on lower flyleaf. Adams S-1136. The present binding was probably executed without commission by a Lyonese shop. Reflecting the mid-century vogue for interlacing strapwork and arabesque binding decor, the rather crudely cut tools of this binding can nearly all be traced to Parisian models, including the "Cupid's Bow" binder (cf. Nixon. Grolier , tools CB 13, 29a and 29b), Thomas Wotton's binder "B" (cf. Foot, Henry Davis Gift II.11, p. 140), and Grolier's "Cuspianus" binder (cf. Nixon, Sixteenth-century gold-tooled bindings in the Pierpont Morgan Library , 21). Since the Parisian binding trade shared the same few tool cutters during this period, there existed a certain common repertory of tool forms, several of which were copied by the probably provincial binder of this volume. Most painted strapwork bindings of the mid-sixteenth century were traditionally considered Lyonese, before modern scholars, combining archival research with thorough study of the binding tools, established the existence of several prolific Parisian ateliers . While it is probable that a number of these bindings truly were produced in Lyons, the second major French center of book production, in the absence of an established repertory of tools from Lyonese ateliers, attributions such as that of the present binding must remain tentative (on the question of Lyonese mid-16th-century bindings, see Nixon, op. cit. , 42, and Schfer/von Arnim, Europischer Einbandkunst , 43).
SILIUS ITALICUS, Caius (25-101 A.D.). De Bello Punico . Lyons: Sebastian Gryphius, 1547. 16 o (121 x 71 mm). Italic type. Printer's woodut device on title. Ruled in red throughout. (Minor dampstaining to corners at front, printing flaw to y3 affecting 4 letters.) Contemporary French, possibly Lyonese, painted entrelac binding of brown calf, covers tooled in gold with double fillet border and interlacing strapwork around which curl tendrils terminated by open leaf and petal tools, at center an annular cartouche enclosing a pair of "cupid's bow"-like tools, the strapwork and open tools painted green, greenish-blue, and white, four small solid flower tools and four star tools in interstices, spine with four raised bands and two half bands, the 7 compartments tooled alternately with single very small fleur-de-lys and crowned dolphin tools, board edges gilt with pairs of tiny flower tools and a fillet, edges gauffred and gilt (corners, joints and extremities worn, much of the paint rubbed away); modern folding cloth box. Provenance : 19th-century notes in German on lower flyleaf. Adams S-1136. The present binding was probably executed without commission by a Lyonese shop. Reflecting the mid-century vogue for interlacing strapwork and arabesque binding decor, the rather crudely cut tools of this binding can nearly all be traced to Parisian models, including the "Cupid's Bow" binder (cf. Nixon. Grolier , tools CB 13, 29a and 29b), Thomas Wotton's binder "B" (cf. Foot, Henry Davis Gift II.11, p. 140), and Grolier's "Cuspianus" binder (cf. Nixon, Sixteenth-century gold-tooled bindings in the Pierpont Morgan Library , 21). Since the Parisian binding trade shared the same few tool cutters during this period, there existed a certain common repertory of tool forms, several of which were copied by the probably provincial binder of this volume. Most painted strapwork bindings of the mid-sixteenth century were traditionally considered Lyonese, before modern scholars, combining archival research with thorough study of the binding tools, established the existence of several prolific Parisian ateliers . While it is probable that a number of these bindings truly were produced in Lyons, the second major French center of book production, in the absence of an established repertory of tools from Lyonese ateliers, attributions such as that of the present binding must remain tentative (on the question of Lyonese mid-16th-century bindings, see Nixon, op. cit. , 42, and Schfer/von Arnim, Europischer Einbandkunst , 43).
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
