Apr 07, 2011 - Sale 2242

Sale 2242 - Lot 8

Price Realized: $ 2,160
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(APOLLO AND PEGASUS FORGERY.) Appianus of Alexandria. Romanorum historiarum. Latin translation by Sigismund Gelenius et al. [16], 506, [44] (of [46]) leaves, with pages 437-40 in duplicate; lacks blank T8. Folio, 307x204 mm, early 20th-century brown morocco gilt, covers decorated with frame of interlacing double fillets and foliate tools around upright Apollo and Pegasus medallion beneath cartouche containing author's name and title, spine in 8 compartments with rosette tool in each; moderate browning or foxing, light soiling on title, scattered early marginalia; cloth folding case. Adams A1347; Hoffmann I, 217. Morocco booklabel of Michel Wittock. Basel: (Hieronymus Froben & Nicolaus Episcopius), 1554
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Additional Details

The celebrated Renaissance bindings with the emblematic Apollo and Pegasus medallion made for the Genoese collector Giovanni Battista Grimaldi spawned a series of fakes and forgeries by at least 2 binders in the later 19th and early 20th century. The example offered here is likely the work of Domenico Conti-Borbone, a Milanese bookbinder who specialized in outright forgeries of the Grimaldi bindings, in contrast to his predecessor Vittorio Villa, who produced fakes by modifying unadorned but genuine 16th century bindings.