COMMISSION ISSUED BY THE DOGE OF VENICE FRANCESCO... Lot 31

COMMISSION ISSUED BY THE DOGE OF VENICE FRANCESCO DONATO TO HIS PODESTATE ALESSANDRO CONTARENO Italy, Venice (Ducal Palace), September 7, 1549 In Latin and Italian, manuscript on parchment In-4; 91 ff; 236 x 160 mm. (165 x 105 mm.); on parchment; 23 long lines in carbon ink; graphite rules; contemporary foliation at upper corner; Italian cursive. Full contemporary Venetian morocco, spine with 3 nerves, boards decorated with an octogram bearing a super ex-libris "ALEXANDRI CONTARENO" on the upper board and the date "MDXLVIIII" on the lower board, corner fleurons with a frame composed of a large roulette and gilt and cold fillets, fillet on the edges, gilt edges, cloth conservation case (20th c.). Bindings not preserved, slight rubbing to the corners. (245 x 170mm) Manuscript in Latin and Italian copied by "H. Murianus", secretary of the 79th doge of Venice, Francesco Donato, and sent in a superb Venetian binding with his name to Alessandro Contareno, podestate of Torcello. The podestates were the first magistrates in charge of administering the cities. They had to maintain justice and public order on behalf of a sovereign lordship, in this case the Republic of Venice. The doge regularly sent his orders in a luxurious volume as here. TEXT Incipit (f.1v) "Tibi nobili viro Alexandro Contareno dilecto civi, ac fideli nostro, quid de nostro mandato vadas in Potestatem nostrum Torcelli, Maiurbii, Burani, Constantii, et de Imanis:..." Colophon: "Dat. In n[ost]ro Ducali Palatio die vii septembr[is] in diebus viii M. D. XXXXIX" with the monogram of the doge and the signature of the secretary. Later handwritten additions in Italian by several sixteenth-century hands: to the last vellum leaf to the last three endpapers; various texts: dated statute, accounts and extracts concerning the podestate of Torcello. PROVENANCE No binding reproduced by De Marinis is close to this one (T. De Marinis, La Legatura artistica in Italia nei secoli XV e XVI..., Florence, 1960). However, another Commission given by the Doge in the same year, in a similar binding, can be found in the Van der Elst library (Monaco, 1985, no. 64). Handwritten bookplate on the upper flyleaf "to Mr. Count W de Paar n°49 D Bi", Eduard Count von Paar (1837-1919), known to have been the close military adviser to the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I. Bookplate of W. H. Corfield on the upper flyleaf and bookplate of Maurice Burrus on the upper endpaper.