[GIOVANNI BATTISTA PALATINO] Compendio del Gran Volume Dell'arte del Bene, & Leggiadramente Scriuere Tutte le Forti di Letteree e Carrateri. Venice, Aluise Sessa, 1588.

Octavo. (62) ff. Palatino's third and final revision of Libro Nuovo, his landmark book on lettering. With a woodcut frontispiece of the author and prefatory sonnet by Spica. Consisting of woodcut illustrations showing a variety of calligraphic styles including Roman capitals, blackletter, and various types of script.

Palatino, along with fellow Italians Arrighi and Tagliente, is the most influential and important of the European writing masters of the Renaissance period, famous during his own lifetime as both a scribe and an intellectual. His combination of "calligraphic skill and philisophico-literary pretensions had a lasting effect on the form of the writing book, and on the valuation given to it," according to Stanley Morison in his Early Italian Writing Books. "Where Arrighi and Tagliente had concentrated on the functional and decorative aspects of writing, Palatino with his erudite descriptions and samples of hands which had no practical value made it clear that calligraphy was a matter to engage the intelligence of the scholarly and educated. Now that the printing press had taken over so many of the tasks that engaged the writer's skill, Palatino sought to give it a higher place and purpose."

The Compendio was first published in 1566 as a response to Gianfrancesco Cresci, an up-and-coming calligrapher who criticized what he considered to be Palatino's useless adornments to some of his alphabets. According to Morison, for the Compendio, Palatino's chancery cursive letters were indeed reformed to look more like Cresci's work, but Palatino pointedly did not alter the accompanying instructions. A firestorm of calligraphic controversy followed the book's publication, as Cresci accused Palatino of hiring an engraver to cut the new letters, Palatino's skills being insufficient to the task. The claim persists to this day, though most experts, after analyzing two surviving Palatino manuscripts, seem to agree that it was indeed the master himself who refashioned the script. This copy of the Compendio is bound in modern full vellum with yapped fore-edges. Professional repairs to two leaves, minor soiling throughout, title page with a small wedge torn from bottom margin, practice letters and doodles of previous owner in margins throughout. A very good copy. (Bonacini 1343; Marzoli 3; Morison, pp. 70-71). (21823) $2500.00

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