THUCYDIDE

Lot 93
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Estimation :
2000 - 3000 EUR
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Result : 7 077EUR
THUCYDIDE
L'Histoire de Thucidide Athenien, contenant les guerres qui ont été entre les Peloponesiens & les Atheniens, tant au pais des Grecz que des Romains, & lieux circonvoysins. Paris, Vincent Sertenas, 1555. In-8, brown calf, boards decorated with a gilt and wax decoration, at the top and bottom set of floral scrolls standing out on a gold stippled background and rising from a large central mandorla with scrolling at the cardinal points, the middle charged with a large cartouche with a reserve in the form of cut leather, smooth spine decorated throughout with a roulette of repeated aldine irons, gilt edges (Binding of the time). Translation by Claude de Seyssel, the first French translator of the great Greek historian. A fine copy, in a very nice and rich mid-sixteenth century wax binding with foliage motifs and cartouche on a gold dotted ground. The composition of the decoration is elaborate and the central cartouche of a complex design of leather scrolls. The white wax painted iron stamped on the head and tail of the large mandorla is found on two bindings reproduced in the Henry Davis Gift catalog (vol. III, n°38 and 40): these, covering two editions of the 1540s, one from Lyon and the other from Basel, are attributed to the workshops that worked for the bibliophile Thomas Wotton, nicknamed the English Grolier, and that Mirjam Foot refers to as Wotton Binder A and Wotton Binder B. An identical binding, from the same workshop and covering the same edition, is reproduced in the large catalog of bindings of the Gumuchian bookshop (n°92). One will notice differences in the application of colored waxes, which allow to distinguish these two bindings. Some old reading marks at the beginning of the text. Manuscript bookplate at the bottom of the title: Comvin (?). Some foxing and staining throughout the volume, wetness affecting the first and last quires. Binding restored in places, notably the hinges; endpapers renewed.
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