Ciceron - Lot 19

Lot n° 19
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Estimation :
1500 - 2000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 4 044EUR
Ciceron - Lot 19
Ciceron Orationum volumina tria. Strasbourg, Josias Rihel, January 1574. In-8 of (16), 305 ff. and (11) ff. : cold-stamped sow skin, framed with fillets and vegetal roulette decorated with small portraits in medallion, different central plate on the boards, initials m * h * a stamped in a cartouche at the top of the first board and the date 1578 in another one at the bottom, spine ornamented, blue-green edges (period binding). Edition of Cicero's Discourses, published by Johannes Sturm (1507-1589), a German humanist and reformer who taught rhetoric in Paris and then in Strasbourg. Printed in italic type, it came from the presses of Josias Rihel (1525-1597), whose typographical mark representing a female allegory holding a ruler and a bridle (temperance or moderation) adorns the title. A printer and bookseller from Strasbourg, Josias Rihel was the tutor of the children of the humanist Jean Sleidan. (Silvestre, no. 599.) The first volume alone, out of two, containing 12 Discourses. Remarkable sow skin binding, cold stamped, dated 1578, with the initials of an amateur of the time. Its decoration consists of two large rectangular plates, different on each board, framed by a roulette decorated with small portraits in medallion and some heraldic escutcheons: this roulette is signed with the monogram BWL. The plate used on the first plate represents King David playing the harp, in a central oval cartouche bordered in the corners by four female figures playing musical instruments: panpipes, harp, lute and flute. The one struck on the second plate represents the biblical scene of Susanna and the two old men: the figures in the corners are personified allegories of Justice, Charity, Faith and Hope. These two plates signed with the initials IK have been described by Goldschmidt (Gothic & Renaissance Bookbindings, I, pp. 313-314). The binding was executed for a contemporary book lover whose initials MHA are stamped on the first board and whose handwritten bookplate appears on the upper flyleaf: MDLXXVIII Matthaeus Hopfterus Augustanus, followed by the biblical phrase Verbum Domini manet in aeternum (The Word of God abides forever), often used by Protestants. A copy of Cicero's De officiis, also printed by Rihel in 1574, bound in the same style for the same enthusiast, is preserved in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. Early handwritten bookplate on the flyleaf Böhm and small bookplate printed in violet André Laviolette.
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