De Partu Virginis …

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Creator

Sannazaro, Jacopo.

Title

De Partu Virginis …

Publisher

Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresani,

Date

August 1528.

Description

This book is technically not bound, but instead covered in contemporary, heavy, plain cream-white paper over very thin pasteboards, and sewn on three supports in the Italian manner. Many Aldines will have been protected in this simple guise in their earliest days. They will have left the shop either as gathered signatures or in a simple wrapper to keep the book block neatly together until the owner took the copy to a local bookbinder. This modest work by Sannazaro is historically significant as the final octavo of the entire era of the Press from the April 1501 inauguration of the revolutionary Portable Library past the death of Andrea Torresani in October 1528 to the closing of the Press in 1529 for some four years.

Source

From the collection of H. George Fletcher.