[Rarebooks] fa: [NETHERLANDS & BELGIUM] Guicciardini: DESCRITTIONE DI TUTTI I PAESI BASSI - 1567

[ArCh]

Auction ending Sunday, October 16. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/37k9kk5p

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Lodovico Guicciardini: Descrittione di M. Ludovico Guicciardini patritio Fiorentino di tutti i Paesi Bassi, altrimenti detti Germania Inferiore. Con piu carte di Geographia del paese, & col ritratto naturale di piu terre principali. Al Gran' Re Cattolico Filippo d'Austria. Con amplissimo Indice di tutte le cose piu memorabili. Anversa [Antwerp]: Apresso Guglielmo Siluio, MDLXVII [1567]. FIRST EDITION. Folio (34 cm) bound in full modern calf; [20], 53, 56-60, p. 56, 62-86, 88-91, 91-214, 216-218, p. 198, p. 195, 221-224, 224-282, 284-296, [21] pp. (erratic pagination, but the text is continuous); title-page with architectural border; double-page coat of arms and portrait of King Phillip II of Spain; 16 (of 17) double-page maps, plans and views; woodcut initials and decorations; all with early hand-coloring.

A rare, if imperfect and extensively restored example of the first edition of this important depiction and description of the Low Countries, especially uncommon with contemporary hand-coloring. Lacking the view of Liege and one page of the accompanying text (else complete); most of the maps and birds-eye views with various degrees of damage and laid down on or in between conservation tissue paper; a few maps and plates with paper repairs to the verso, obscuring some text; damp-staining to the edges of the text block at the beginning and the end; wear and chipping to the edges of the title-page; modest worming to the margins of ca. twelve leaves, not affecting text. The maps, plans and views consist of: Belgica (Belgium and the Netherlands); Brabant; Louvain; Brussels; Antwerp; Antwerp Cathedral; Antwerp City Hall; Bolduc ('s-Hertogenbosch); Malines (Mechelen); Holland; Amsterdam; Flanders; Ghent; Bruges; Ypres; Hainault (Hainaut).

The magnum opus of Lodovico Guicciardini (1521-1589), a Florentine merchant based in Antwerp, and the nephew of the diplomat and historian Francesco Guicciardini. Considered the sixteenth century's most significant geopolitical depiction of the Low Countries and the people and customs thereof, the Descrittione is also an important contemporary or near-contemporary source of information on the lives of Dutch and Flemish artists, many of whom are discussed. "The artistic biographical section of the Descrittione is an amalgam of personal experience, the input of artists (Lucas de Heere and Dominicus Lampsonius) and portions of the first edition of the Vite (1550) by Giorgio Vasari... Vasari clearly read Guicciardini's work for, in his second edtion of the Vite, 1568, Vasari includes Jan's brother, Hubert van Eyck, mentioned in Guicciardini's work..." (Sorensen, Lee, ed.: Dictionary of Art Historians website).

Early/original ownership signatures of William Payneter and Anthony Payneter (and/or Anthonie Pameter), quite possibly William Painter, as the name is more commonly spelled now, and his only son, Anthony. William Painter or Payneter (1540?-1594) was the author of The Palace of Pleasure (1566-67), an important collection of translated stories and novels which "practically first made the Italian novelists known to English readers... [and] inspired Roger Ascham's spirited description of the moral dangers likely to spring from the dissemination of Italian literature in English translations... The work was widely read by Elizabethan Englishmen" and was a source of plots for Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, John Webster, James Shirley, and others. William was also clerk of the ordnance at the Tower of London, and it was in this capacity that he and his son Anthony came to grief, both being found guilty of financial improprieties at the ordnance office (Anthony confessing to it in 1591) and ordered to refund Her Majesty's treasury the sum of 7,075/. (DNB)