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Lot description
[ITALIAN MERCHANT'S NOTEBOOK]. Notebook recording the birth of children, purchase of houses, and other memoranda, dated between 1568 and 1593 A HANDSOME VENETIAN PLAQUETTE BINDING, featuring the design Address to a Married Couple by Valerio Belli, and signed in the exergue "VA. VIN. F." (Valerius Vincentius fecit, i.e. Valerio Belli of Vicenza (1468-1546)). Anthony Hobson recorded just two “stationery bindings” (books bound with blank pages made to be written in) with extravagant plaquette decoration, both Venetian, and about the same date (1550-1560). This one is decorated on both covers by a plaquette designed by the gem engraver and medallist Valerio Belli (1486?-1546), depicting two men and three women, identified (by Douglas Lewis) as “An address to a married couple” and by Molinier as “Allocution” and by Gasparatto as “Allocuzione”. The other blank book features two plaquettes by Belli, “Adoration of the Shepherds” and the “Entombment” (Hobson 42a and 43a, the binding in Paris, BnF, ital. 2119). Hobson also records use of the “An address to a married couple” plaquette on two printed books and nineteen Greek manuscripts bound for Diego Hurtado de Mendoza at Venice, 1540-1546, all now in El Escorial. An incuse matrice apparently was taken to France, where it was applied after 1556 on a copy of L'histoire naturelle et generalle des Indes (Hobson 73y and Fig. 109).