?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
Anonymous, attributed to Noe Bianco. Viaggio da Venetia al Sancto Sepulchro et al Monte Sinai.
Venice: Nicolo di Aristotile detto Zoppino, 1518.
First edition, octavo; title printed in red and black and with woodcut of Jerusalem, illustrated with text woodcuts throughout, featuring some that take up double and full pages and many city views; full-page woodcut of Christ's stepping out of the tomb on verso of colophon leaf; lacking four text leaves: C1, C4, L2 & L3; bound in boards covered with brown marbled paper (some minor staining, tears and small wormholes; final integral blank present with an early doodle on the verso); ex libris Nathan Schur with bookplate; 5 3/4 x 4 in.
"While the anonymous Viaggio da Venetia al Sancto Sepolchro et al Monte Sinai, first published in Venice in 1518, was the most popular Holy Land guidebook in Renaissance Italy, the historical origins of the book have never been fully understood. The ultimate prototype for the Viaggio da Venetia was very likely one or more of these illustrated manuscripts, and the original author of both the text and illustrations was the Franciscan pilgrim Niccolò da Poggibonsi. Despite the eventual erosion of his name from the printed versions of the guidebook, the assertiveness and originality of the author parallels the production of other vernacular literature in mid-fourteenth-century Italy. Unlike Latin guidebooks of previous centuries, the intent to include illustrations that re-create the pilgrimage experience, and the unprecedented descriptiveness of the prose together suggest that the book can be considered the foundational text for the genre of the illustrated pilgrimage guidebook." (cf. Moore's 2013 piece, "The Disappearance of an Author and the Emergence of a Genre: Niccolò da Poggibonsi and Pilgrimage Guidebooks between Manuscript and Print," in Renaissance Quarterly.)
