Sales catalogue 533: Maggs Bros

Date:: 1930

Reference:: WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/88

Credit: Sales catalogue 533: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

23/294 page 7

$Antwerp. POGGIO BRACCIOLINI, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO, Italian humanist, Chancellor of the Republic of Florence (died 1459). De nobilitate. Goruic Lerrer, 35 lines to a full page. Ornamental wood- cut initial letters. Printed signatures. With full-page printer's device of Gerard Leeu on verso of last leaf. Antwerp, Gerard Leeu, 18th March, 1489. 4to. Vellum. (SEE ILLUSTRATION OPPOSITE.) i. £105 Flam *13200. Campbell 1427. Proctor 93835. The first edition printed at Antwerp by Gerard Leeu with his types 4 and 5, of the dialogue Ox nobility, composed by the humanist and historian Giovanni Francesco Poggio, 1n 1440. Giovanni Francesco Poggio was born at Terranuova near Arezzo, in 1380. After studying at Florence, he went to Rome, where he became ‘Apostolic Secretary under three successive popes. He was noted as an archaeologist and historian, spending much time in the discovery of rare manuscripts of the early Roman writers, in monastic libraries. In 1423 he became secretary to Martin V, and after the death of the latter in 1431, he began to write in earnest, and completed the Facetzae, most popularly associated with his name, in 1450. He was made Chancellor of Florence by the Medici in 1453, and there he wrote his later works, remaining in that city until his death in 1459. This copy has the fine full-page printer’s device of Leeu on the last leaf: the Castle of Antwerp, with the flags of the Holy Roman Empire and the Archduke Maximilian flying from the central tower. On Leeu’s death this device was acquired by Thierry Martens, printer at Antwerp. No copy in U.S.A. (according to Census). [7] \$

Sales catalogue 533: Maggs Bros

Licence and re-use

Contents