 |
|
      |
 |
| |
||
Our Books:» Cuneiform Tablet to 16th Century » Renaissance of Calligraphy, 1906-1959  |
|
Octavo. (63) ff. A reprint of the 1547 edition, identical to that version save for the date. With a title-page portrait of Palatino as well as the Spica sonnet. Consisting of woodcut engravings depicting numerous examples of lettering, including Cancellaresca Formata, Lettera Napolitana, Lettera Tadesca, Lettera Francese, and many others, along with textual notes and instructions.
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 higer place and purpose."
The "Libro" was Palatino's first revision of his seminal work on lettering, Libro Nuovo, featuring reset text and additional cuts. This copy is bound in later full vellum, stamped in blind on the front and back covers, lettered in black on the spine. Bookplate of William S. Maxwell, a noted art historian and book collector. Binding with small crack to spine toward the foot, extending onto the front cover a bit; minor dampstaining to outer margins of a few leaves; small amount of hand coloring interior by a former owner, including a small drawing on a blank endleaf.
A near fine copy of a scarce early edition of this important work. (Bonacini 1335; Morison, pp. 70-71). (21843) $7500.00 |
|
|
||
