De Civitate Dei
AUGUSTINE, Saint. De Civitate Dei. 305 ff. of 306 (missing final blank). [a-b8 c-z10 A-G10 H10 (-H10, final blank)], with three blanks (ff. 1, 16, 305). 46 lines, gothic type (2:84) printed double-column, roman headline (4:110). Folio, 286 x 202 mm, bound in contemporary Venetian calf over wooden boards paneled and tooled in blind using a large floral arabesque roll and a smaller interior roll of cords framing a central Islamic-style motif of five knotted lozenges; spine with raised bands separating four compartments blind-tooled in a lattice pattern with pointelle decoration, later paper label; three of four clasps partially intact on front board (traces of four clasps, now lost, on rear board). Venice: Nicolas Jenson, 1475.
Second Venetian edition of Saint Augustine's City of God, a foundational text of European culture, and a typographical masterpiece from the press of Nicolas Jenson. This copy survives in a contemporary fifteenth-century Venetian binding with Islamic motifs incorporated into the tooled decoration.
Augustine's De Civitate Dei appeared in print for the first time in 1467 at Subiaco, printed by Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz. The first Venetian edition of the City of God was printed by Johannes and Vindelinus de Spira in 1470. This second Venetian edition is the only edition of Augustine issued by French printer Nicolas Jenson (1420-1480), the second printer in Venice, whose publications numbered over 100 works and equaled the best, and often surpassed, all Venetian fifteenth-century printed books in beauty and importance.
Jenson's types, the often-magnificent impressions, and the mise-en-page of his books, are considered milestones in the history of printing; his very name is synonymous with excellence. Along with his Pliny of 1472 and his Plutarch's Lives of 1478, the City of God is one of Jenson's most beautiful works. The present text is buttressed by wide margins, and entirely rubricated by hand in red and blue.
A seminal Christian text, Augustine's City of God had considerable influence not only on Medieval but also Renaissance thought. Augustine has been called "the first medieval man and the last classical man" (Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, chapter 2). Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, Emperor Charlemagne, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and many other theologians and philosophers were inspired by this work. Like the Bible, the City of God has been a major topic of debate for theologians, historians, politicians, and philosophers throughout the ages.
The binding is a refined and elegant example of Italian craftsmanship ca. 1450-1480, incorporating Islamic elements derived from textiles, leathers, and possibly Islamic bindings by way of trade routes between Venice and the Near East in the mid-fifteenth century. Scholar Anthony Hobson suggests that Jenson was the first to introduce the Islamic style of binding in Venice (Humanists and Bookbinders, p. 51).
A beautiful example of a Jenson incunable in a contemporary Islamic-style Italian binding, this is an exceptional copy of an essential Christian text. Three text leaves trimmed short and with red edges, probably supplied from another copy; internal blank (f. 16) with very light offsetting, indicating it may have also been supplied. Leaves of one quire (i) bound out of order, and some staining, still a bibliophile's treasure.
PROVENANCE: Giovanni Battista Contarini, with his donation inscription to a Venetian seminary dated 1 January 1583 on second leaf; Shakespeare collector Doctor John Gott, Bishop of Truro (1830-1906), with his ownership inscription dated 1865 at Rome on front pastedown; Henry H. Runnell, his ownership signature on last leaf; Abel E. Berland, his sale Christie's New York, October 2001. Early ink marginalia throughout, and eighteenth-century equations on rear pastedown.
BMC V, 175 (imperfect). Goff A-1235. GW 2879. HC* 2051. IGI 972. ISTC ia01235000. Polain 360. Pellechet 1550 ([310] ff.). Proctor 4096.
Item nr. 166923
Price:
$87,500.00