Libro de Optimo Imperatore, 1460 - 1480
Abstract
This is a military treatise from ancient Greece, in a Latin translation by an eminent Greek humanist and diplomat who spent most of his adult life in Italy, serving the city of Venice and the Pope. There is no modern edition or census of the surviving manuscripts of this important text (possibly surviving in only fifteen manuscripts, including this copy). It is extremely rare on the market, with only one sale since 1947 recorded in the Schoenberg Database.
Table of contents: Ad serenissimum Regem Alfonsum Nicolai sagundini traductionem onosandri praefatio; Onosander ad Q. Verannum de optimo imperatore eiusque offitio per Nicolaum Sagundinum e greco in latinum traductus.
Dates
- Creation: 1460 - 1480
Extent
1 volumes
Language of Materials
Latin
Custodial History
Evidence of the script and codicological details suggests this was written in Northeastern Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century, probably c. 1460-80; the ruling pattern with the horizontal rules ruled in ink by means of a rake, and the vertical bounding lines added in lead (note the single pricking in the lower outer margin) were particularly common in Northeastern Italy, especially in Venice (Derolez, 1984, vol. 1, p. 84). Reverend Walter Sneyd of Keele Hall, Staffordshire (1809-1888), bibliophile and antiquarian, who acquired the surplus of Matteo Luigi Canonici’s library in 1835. His round heraldic bookplate, pasted inside front cover: “Guelteri Sneyd ex-libris.” Sold at Sotheby’s, 16 December 1903, lot. 565. Belonged to the Wigan Free Library; their oval stamp in blind on ff. 1 and 28 (touching written area); and their large printed bookplate, front flyleaf, f. i; front cover on paper, “Case 13” and front flyleaf, f. i v, “E.P.B. case 13”; bought from George Winter, 1904, his name on a blue paper slip loosely inserted. Described as MS 42411 while at the Wigan library (Ker and Piper, 1991, p. 575).
Author
- Onasander
Other related names
- Conoici, Matteo Luigi
- Sneyd, Walter of Keele Hall, former owner
- Sotheby's, dealer
- Wigan Free Library, former owner
- Winter, George, former owner
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased for Bryn Mawr College Library from the Seymour Adelman and Howard Lehman Goodhart Funds.
Physical Description
Paper support
Nineteenth- or early twentieth-century half leather and marbled paper binding, spine with gilt title “Onosander Latine M.S. Saec. XV,” rubbed with visible wear along the sides and top and bottom of the spine, but overall in good condition.
i+30+i; 191 x 137 mm bound to 198 x 147 mm
Horizontal rules in brown ink, full-length single vertical bounding lines ruled in lead or brown crayon, with a single large pricking in the outer margin alongside the penultimate ruled line (justification, 149 x 105-103 mm.),
Humanistic cursive script.
Thirty-one long lines, two blank spaces for four-line initials, small guide letters for one-line initials throughout which were to be placed in the inner margin alongside the vertical bounding line, first folio darkened and with two small stains within the text space (text remains legible), inside front and back covers stained at the corners, but otherwise in very good condition
Modern foliation in pencil, upper right recto
Genre / Form
Geographic
Temporal
Find It at the Library
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