Apr 07, 2008 - Sale 2141

Sale 2141 - Lot 3

Price Realized: $ 3,840
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(AMADÍS DE GAULA.) Los Quatros Libros de Amadís d[e] Gaula nuevamente impressos y hystoriados. General and divisional titles printed in red and black with large woodcut vignette flanked by vertical woodcut panels. 135 text illustrations, including repeats. Letterpress cancel slips mounted on A4v and A5r. [5] (of [6]), 350 leaves; lacks A2 (end of preface) and oo1.8 (leaves 285 and 292). Folio, 297x212 mm, contemporary limp vellum, lacking ties; scattered minor stains, marginal dampstaining on opening leaves, preliminaries rehinged, general title soiled with crude marginal restoration affecting panel next to vignette, several minor marginal repairs elsewhere without text loss, nearly three quarters of the last leaf torn away and restored substantially affecting text and colophon. (Venice: Giovanni Antonio dei Nicolini da Sabbio for Giovanni Battista Pederzano, 1533)
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Richly illustrated later edition of the earliest and most influential romance of chivalry in Spanish, describing the fantastic adventures of the title character, a knight modeled on Lancelot. The earliest surviving edition, dating from 1508, combined the first 3 books from an earlier version of uncertain origin with an original fourth book by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo (1450-1505). A sequel by Montalvo entitled Las Sergas de Esplandián (probably best known as the source of the name California, an imaginary island in the narrative) first appeared in 1510. Continuations and imitations by other authors were published throughout the 16th century. "In addition to the entertaining plot, Montalvo's five books provide a manual of chivalric etiquette, a political primer for the education of late-medieval princes, and a critique of fifteenth-century Spanish culture, society, and mores . . . Montalvo's romance was one of the most widely read works of secular fiction in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (DLB). DLB 286, 127-41; Harvard/Mortimer-Italian 19; Palau 10449.