BOCCACE, Jean (1313-1375). Il Decamerone... è... Lot 15

BOCCACE, Jean (1313-1375). Il Decamerone... è varie figure nuovamente stampato et ricorretto per messer Antoni Brucioli... Venice: Gabriele Giolito di Ferrari, 1542. Very beautiful binding from the workshop of the Fugger Binder, also known as the Venetian Apple Binder, recognizable by various elements including the small "apple" irons in the corners. Active in Venice from the mid-1530s, the Fugger Binder made numerous bindings for various quality sponsors, the most famous of which were Johann Jakob Fugger and Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle. In his Renaissance Book Collecting, Hobson sheds a special light on the business relationship between the Venetian publisher Gabriele Giolito and the Fugger Binder, from whom he ordered numerous bindings: "Giolito, the leading entrepreneur of the Italian trade, no doubt employed various Venetian binding shops, but his closest ties were with the Fugger Binder. He was involved in both the latter's large commissions [Fugger and Granvelle]. It is tempting to conclude that from 1540 the Fugger Binder was the manager-bookbinder of the Libreria della Fenice [that of Giolito]. While the border of flowering branches in the frame can be compared to the one reproduced by Hobson p. 103 (ill. 54 "rose-and-staff border") for a binding by Andrea di Lorenzo, known as the Mendoza Binder, all the other decorative elements (angular apple irons, spandrels, undulating lozenge decoration, double circle in the centre of the plates bearing respectively the title and a golden shield, etc.) are part of the decorative apparatus of the Fugger Binder bindings. It is difficult to date the Medici arms painted in the shield on the second plate, but they appear to be later. In most of the bindings of this type that have come down to us, the shield is left empty. The catalogue of the Amédée Rigaud sale (1874), in which this copy appeared, mentioned a provenance Catherine de Medici without anything to support this attribution. Hobson, Renaiss