Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Opus tragoedia[rum] aptissimisq[ue] figuris excultum [...].

Venice, Bernardino de Vianis de Lexona Vercellense, 6 Nov. 1522).

Folio. 140 ff. With four-part woodcut border and 10 woodcuts in the text, as well as several woodcut initials. Later half vellum with marbled covers and ms. title to spine.

 2,500.00

Pretty edition of Seneca's tragedies, edited by Girolamo Avanzi, Gellio Bernardino Marmitta, and Daniel Caietanus. "Reproduces the 1510 edition" (cf. Schweiger). "Texte encadré par le commentaire [...] Page du titre: encadrement ornemental avec fond de hachures obliques et figures de deux daupins affrontés sur les côtés.

Dans le texte: dix vignettes d'une taille rude et grossière" (Essling). The dolphins (four of them, in fact) are cleverly hidden within the ornaments of the woodcut border. Each play is prefixed by an unsophisticated, but prettily designed Renaissance woodcut. A few interspersions in an appealingly cut Greek type.

Slight edge tear to f. 16. Some wrinkling to gutter throughout. Faded 17th century ownership to title page. Some fingerstaining to margins early on, otherwise a very clean and crisp copy from the collection of the steel industrialist Giacomo Galtarossa (b. 1916), president of the Associazione industriali della provincia di Verona (his etched bookplate on front pastedown).

References

BM-STC Italian 621. Essling II, 209, 1691. Schweiger II.2, 938. OCLC 38721121. Not in Adams.