Beschreibung:

Budé, Guillaume. Epistolae Gullielmi Budaei, secretarii regii, posteriores. Paris: Josse Bade, March 1522. Bound with:
Giovanni Battista Giraldi, Cinthii Ioan. Baptistae Gyraldi nobilis Ferrariensis Orationes. Ad serenissimos Venetiarum principes, Marcum Antonium Triuisanum, Franciscum Venerium … in funere Francisci christianiss. Gallorum regis. Venice: Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari & Brothers, 1554. Bound with:
Lorenzo Conti, Laurentij Flisci Contes I.V.D. Orationes duae, ad illustrem virum Baptistam Grimaldum Hieronymi F. Altera in creatione prudentissimorum moderatorum, altera in funere Ferdinandi Caesaris, ad Senatum populumque Genuensem habitae. Mondovì: Leonardo Torrentino, January 1566. Bound with:
Signorino Cuttica, Signorini Cuticae Alexandrini Oratio de optimis studiis habita in Academia Montis Regii MDLXIII. Mondovì: Leonardo Torrentino, March 1564
Nineteen bindings are now recorded with the impresa of a serpent entwined around a key, with motto “Scilicet is superis labor est” (For sure, this is work for gods—Vergil, Aeneid, 4.379), stamped in gold in the centers of both covers. Inside are books in Latin printed between 1517 and 1566, at Basel, Cologne, Florence, Lyon, Mondovì, Paris, and Venice, with Lyonese and Venetian imprints predominating. Two stamps were made, one (91 x 68 mm) for books in folio and quarto format, the other (66 x 48 mm) for octavos and duodecimos. The decoration is restrained: on the larger books, a frame composed of multiple gilt lines, with either a fleuron or fleur-de-lis at the corners; on the smaller ones, a frame containing foliage, with the same fleur-de-lis in corners. Red goatskin is employed for modern authors, olive or brown goatskin for ancient authors and ancient subjects. Each volume has a title lettered in the upper compartment, or vertically down the spine, suggesting how the books were displayed in their owner’s library.
The bindings attracted the eye of Guglielmo Libri, who collected three—lots 2036, 2558, and 2748 in the sale of his library, Sotheby’s, London, 1–15 August 1859—recognizing them as Italian bindings, albeit with a device appearing in Claude Paradin’s collection, Devises heroïques (Lyon, 1557). E. P. Goldschmidt, who recorded two, thought the bindings might be Lyonese (Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings, no. 247). By 1934, seven bindings were known to G. D. Hobson, who ventured, in a Sotheby’s catalogue entry (1–3 August 1934, lot 291), that they were “probably Roman.” Anthony Hobson listed ten bindings in 1953 in his monograph on French and Italian bindings in the Abbey library, declaring them to be “unquestionably Roman” and, in view of the high proportion of books printed north of the Alps, speculating that they belonged to a foreigner, perhaps a Frenchman residing in Rome. By 1980, Hobson had reconsidered. His investigation of the libraries of the patrician families of Genoa, that of Giovanni Battista Grimaldi in particular, led him to believe that the owner was a Genoese nobleman (“La biblioteca di Giovanni Battista Grimaldi,” in Atti della Società Ligure di Storia Patria 20 (1980), pp. 108–119). The third of the four works bound in this volume, the text of a speech delivered by Lorenzo Conti for the election in 1565 of Battista Grimaldi to the Senate of Genoa, strengthens Hobson’s argument.
In 2012, Hobson delivered in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch the name of a likely owner, Tommaso Franzone, and provided an updated list of seventeen books (in eighteen volumes) decorated with the coiled-snake device. (A nineteenth volume is added below.) Tommaso di Gaspare Franzone (d. 1627) belonged to the entrepreneurial “new” nobility of Genoa. He revived the family’s fortunes through astute participation in the silk trade and laid the foundations for their subsequent social ascent, serving twice as senator, and ensuring that his sons Agostino (1573–1658) and Anfrano (d. 1621) married into old families and held public offices. In 1602 he commenced building a villa in Albaro and in 1606 bought the Palazzo di Nicolò Spinola in via Luccoli.
Hobson assumes that the coiled-snake bindings were made for Tommaso in the mid-1560s, some ten years after the Genoese banker and financier Giovanni Battista Grimaldi (1524?–1612) had installed his library of about two hundred volumes in a newly built villa near Genoa. Comparing Grimaldi’s bindings, adorned with the famous plaquette of “Apollo & Pegasus,” with the coiled-snake bindings, Hobson notes striking similarities: the Franzone and Grimaldi bindings both utilize impresa blocks of two sizes, both have spine titling in the same positions, both follow an eccentric color scheme (red goatskin for modern authors, olive for ancient), and although bound twenty years apart in different shops, both have certain technical and decorative features in common. Hobson believes that Grimaldi’s library inspired Tommaso, and that in bibliophilic matters Tommaso was Grimaldi’s protégé. He adduces as evidence of that relation a book from Grimaldi’s library which contains Tommaso’s signature (Apollo and Pegasus, no. 69). Two of the recorded coiled-snake bindings were once in the possession of Anfrano Mattia di Gaspare Franzone (1646–1679), Tommaso’s great-grandson.
The small number of tools on the coiled-snake bindings have not allowed identification of the binder. Hobson found no tools in common with those in the kit of the local Grimaldi Binder, and he could not exclude the possibility that the shop was located elsewhere.
Addition to Hobson's List
(19) Marcus Junianus Justinus, Ex Trogi Pompeii historiis externis libri XXXXIIII. His accessit ex Sexto Aurelio Victore de vita et moribus Romanorum imperatorum epitome (Lyon: Sébastien Gryphe 1555). Milltown Park College, Dublin (circular ink-stamp “Bibl. Patr. Dom. SJ – Milltown Park” on title-page) — James Fenning, Dublin (Whyte’s, The James Fenning Sale of Antiquarian Books, Dublin, 19–20 October 2012, lot 984: “contemporary red morocco, the sides with both plain and gilt borders enclosing a large oval in gilt of a key with an entwined snake within the motto ‘Scilicet is superis labor est’ … gilt spine, lettered directly and vertically; with a small circular stamp on the title-page”). Current location not traced.
4 works in one volume, 4to (203 x 150 mm). (I) Roman types, with Greek, 27 lines. collation: A–G8 H10 I8 α8 β8 γ8 δ8 ε8: 114 leaves. Large woodcut Ascensius device of a printing shop on title-page, floriated woodcut initials. (II) Italic types, 29 lines plus headline. collation: A–D4 only: 16 (of 26) leaves (bound without E4–F6). 26 leaves. Large woodcut printer's device on title-page, woodcut headpieces and historiated initials. (III) Italic types, with Roman, 26 lines plus headline. collation: A–E4: 20 leaves. Armorial woodcut on title-page, one repeated historiated initial. (IV) Italic types, 29 lines. collation: A–B4: 8 leaves. Armorial woodcut on title-page, one large historiated woodcut initial. ([I]: Title and following leaf with repaired tear at top margin touching a few letters, some worming, occasionally repaired, in top fore-edge margins at end, scattered marginal soiling. [II]: Title-page lightly soiled and cropped at foot, small burn-hole affecting text A3–B1 [III & IV]: some faint dampstaining at upper fore-edge corners.)
binding: Contemporary Genoese russet goatskin impresa binding (212 x 157 mm), mid-1560s, blind fillets around sides, double frame of interlaced gilt fillets, leaf at outer angles of each frame, in center an oval containing impresa of snake curling around key with motto “Scilicet is superis labor est,” spine with 4 full bands and 5 false bands in gilt, 2-line title “BVDAE EPIST.” in top compartment, rosette in others, plain edges. (Minor restoration to joints and corners.) Dark green morocco folding-case with plastic window.
provenance: Sixteenth-century inscription “pecia” cropped from foot of title of Giraldi (unidentified) — probably Tommaso Franzone (supralibros, purported user of impresa with motto “Scilicet is superis labor est”) — Seventeenth-century deleted inscription “Car… Julii Mul… R…” on upper endleaf (unidentified) — Librairie Thomas-Scheler, Livres précieux du XVe au XIXe siècle: XXIIe Biennale des Antiquaires: Paris, Carrousel du Louvre (2004), item 5 (€18,000). acquisition: Purchased from Librairie Thomas-Scheler, 2004.  
references: (I) BP16 104454; FB 59359; USTC 180858; Adams B-3131; (II) Edit16 21263; USTC 833281; Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari (Rome, 1890–1895), I, p. 433; (III) Edit16 15363; USTC 823820; Bersano Begey & Dondi, Le cinquecentine piemontesi (Turin, 1961–1966), II, no. 1083; (IV) Edit16 13892; USTC 825146; Bersano Begey, op. cit., no. 1075; cf. for the binding: A. Hobson, “A Genoese Book Collector,” in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 2012, pp. 208–212 (p. 209, no. 17); A. Hobson, Apollo and Pegasus: An Enquiry into the Formation and Dispersal of a Renaissance Library (Amsterdam, 1975), no. 69, pp. 97–100.