?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
GONZÁLEZ DE MENDOZA, JUAN. Dell'Historia della China. Italian translation by Francesco Avanzo. [16], 379, [33] pages. 4to, modern gilt-panelled vellum; occasional light soiling and marginal foxing, old signature and stamps on title, blank lower outer corner of a few leaves restored, small rust hole in T8. Rome: Bartolomeo Grassi, 1586
first edition in italian; issue with Grassi imprint. First published in 1585 in Spanish, "Mendoza's work gave an exhaustive description of the country and its people, together with accounts of travel of Spanish missionaries across the Pacific to China . . . For upwards of a century Mendoza's treatise remained the standard Western classic on the Celestial Empire" (Penrose). Pages 301-77 contain Martín Ignacio de Loyola's account of his westward circumnavigation in 1582-84, during which he passed through Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Mexico on his way to China. Since Avanzo's translation was made from the 1585 Rome original edition, it does not include the Espejo text on New Mexico (see the next lot). Alden 586/31; Penrose, pages 285-86; Wagner, Spanish Southwest 7g; cf. Streit-Dindinger IV, 1985; Palau 105503 note.
