Collections News | Recent Acquisitions | Printed Books & Bindings

+ Zoom title page Binding and title page. Giacomo Torelli (1608–1678). Scene e machine preparate alle Nozze di Teti, Balletto Reale [Paris: s.n., 1654]. Bound with: Giulio Strozzi (1583–1652). Feste theatrali per la Finta pazza [Paris: s.n., 1645]. PML 195035. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2008.

La Finta Pazza, the first Italian opera performed in France, was a brilliant success for the Italian scene designer Giacomo Torelli, who followed up with a prequel, the ballet Nozze di Teti, starring Louis XIV in the part of Apollo. For these two commemorative publications Torelli commissioned Nicolas Cochin and Israël Silvestre to engrave large double folding plates after his designs for sets which had astounded audiences with tricks of perspective and ingenious mechanical devices. This copy is in an elaborate armorial binding indicating that it once belonged to Henri-Jules de Bourbon-Condé, son of the Grand Condé and proprietor of a magnificent library at Chantilly.

+ Zoom folio 89v "The Nativity" and "Saint James," woodcuts in Catholic Church. Book of Hours. French & Latin. Horae ad usum Romanum. [Paris: Jean Du Pré or Chablis: Jean Le Rouge] for Antoine Vérard, 2 Sept. 1485. PML 129974; ChL1447C. Purchased as the gift of the B. H. Breslauer Foundation and on the B. H. Breslauer Foundation Fund, the Curt F. Bühler Fund, the Lathrop C. Harper Fund, and the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2007.

This is the earliest illustrated Book of Hours printed in France and also the first known publication of Antoine Vérard, who would go on to produce many other editions of this perennial bestseller. It is possible that he published earlier editions that have disappeared entirely, but this one has all the marks of a pioneering venture in its tentative typography and archaic woodcuts (the origins of which have yet to be established). Following his example, other printers and booksellers would develop new and more sophisticated styles of decorating and illustrating this devotional text, which had been a staple of the Paris book trade even before the invention of printing, but which would reach an entirely new reading public in consequence of the publishing innovations evident in this sole surviving copy, unknown to bibliographical scholarship until 1966.

Volvelles in Sebastian Münster (1489–1552), Organum uranicum. Basle: Heinrich Petri, 1536; bound with Venerable Bede (673–735), Opuscula cumplura de temporum ratione. Cologne: Printed by Johannel Prael for Peter Quentel, 1537. PML 195039. Purchased as the gift of Rudy L. Ruggles, Jr., and on the Lathrop C. Harper Fund, 2008.

Two astronomical treatises are bound together in this volume, first a collection of tracts by the Venerable Bede on dating systems and calendar reform, second a mathematical account of planetary motions by Sebastian Münster. Readers could calculate the position of heavenly bodies by using Münster's elegantly designed and brilliantly colored volvelles, rotating dials and pointers calibrated like slide rules and attached by threads to the leaves, which contained the instructions. This copy was owned by two famous astronomers, Peter Crüger (1580–1639) and Johannes Hevelius (1611–1687), who built the most advanced observatory of his day and used it to make lunar maps of unprecedented detail and accuracy.

Binding. Francisco de Vargas Mejia (1484–1560). Lettres et memoires de François de Vargas, de Pierre de Malvenda, et de quelques evêques d'Espagne touchant le concile de Trente. Translated and edited by Michel Le Vassor. Amsterdam: Chez Pierre Brunel, 1699. PML 195033. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2008.

Le Vassor dedicated his translation of Vargas's Lettres et memoires to the English statesman William Trumbull, who had allowed him to consult manuscripts about the Council of Trent in the Trumbull family library. This is the dedication copy in an elegant gold-tooled red morocco presentation binding by the Double Drawer Handle Bindery, thought to have been the "most important Amsterdam workshop of the eighteenth century." Since Le Vassor would have sent Trumbull this copy as soon as the book was published, he must have commissioned the binding in or soon after 1699, just a year or two after this workshop had been established.