[ZANTANI (Antonio)]

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Lot n° 8
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[ZANTANI (Antonio)]
Le Imagini con tutti i riversi trovati et le vite de gli imperatori tratte dalle medaglie et dalle historie de gli antichi. Libro primo. No place [Venice], Enea Vico Parm., 1548. In-4 of (60) ff, including an engraved title-frontispiece, 17 ff. of text (privilege, notice to the reader, pages of explanatory text alternating with the engravings), the final folio bearing the typographical mark on the verso, and 41 ff. of full-page engravings : red morocco, boards entirely covered with a large compartmentalized decoration drawn by straight and curved black listels, set with gilt fillets and punctuated here and there with large gilt scrolls, spreading out in a network from an oval medallion mosaicked in olive green in the centre, two mosaic compartments in havana and four others at the cardinal points in olive green, compartments at the edge decorated with a sifted background, traces of silk ribbons, spine decorated with small repeated mosaic fleurons, gilt edges (period binding). First edition and first printing. Finely engraved illustration in intaglio by Enea Vico, comprising an architectural title-frontispiece, twelve ornamented full-page cartouches, each surmounted by a medallion portrait of an emperor, and sixty-two full-page engravings, each containing twelve circular spaces for representations of medals and coins, some of them empty. The last leaf contains the large typographical mark on the reverse. An engraver and numismatist born in Parma in 1523, Enea Vico was a pupil of Tommaso Barlacchi; he worked in Florence for the Medici, in Venice, and then at the court of Alfonso II d'Este, in Ferrara, where he died in 1567. Esteemed by Vasari, who mentions him in the Lives of the Painters, Vico engraved numerous prints, including a Conversion of Saint Paul after Salviati, which made him famous. He also made a name for himself with a series of works on ancient coins and medals, including this one, dedicated to the Roman emperors. An important Parisian mosaic binding of the period, executed in the workshop known as the binder of Mahieu's Aesop. It is distinguished by the elegance of the decoration and by the large straight and curved black interlacing which contrasts with the colours of the morocco. The workshop was named by Hobson after the copy of Aesop's Fables (Basel, 1501), bound for Thomas Mahieu. Active from about 1550 to 1570, it worked mainly for Thomas Mahieu, but also for Jean Grolier. Several of the binding's irons are common to those of two bindings from this workshop: a Parisian binding covering a 1548 Lyon edition, reproduced by Needham in Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings (no. 62), and a binding bearing Jean Grolier's motto, reproduced by Nixon in Sixteenth Century gold-tooled Bookbindings in the Pierpont Morgan Library (no. 31) A handwritten note on the verso of the last endpaper, dated in the late seventeenth century, underlines the fluctuating value of books: M. Petit le jeune m'a troché ce livre contre une 8e édition des Caractères de La Bruyère ce samedi 15 septembre 1696. This eighth edition of the Caractères had been published two years earlier (1694) by Etienne Michallet. Engraved armorial bookplate of Sir Joseph Mawbey (1730-1798), an English politician whom Gillray caricatured. Small light brown spots. Minor and very skilful restorations to corners and hinges. The copy is preserved in a modern black morocco slipcase. (Mortimer, Italian 16th Century Books, n° 556. - Bartsch, Le Peintre-graveur, t. XV, pp. 275-370. - Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d'arte e d'antichità, n° 3055.)
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