?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
HOMER. Ilias [with the lives of Homer by Herodotus and Plutarch]. Greek text. [56], 277, [1] leaves, including final leaf with colophon and Aldine device * Ulyssea. Batrachomyomachia. Hymni XXXII. Greek text. 251, [1] leaves, including final leaf with colophon and Aldine device. Together, 2 volumes. 8vo, Volume 1 162x98 mm, in contemporary Italian black morocco with acorn roll border in blind enclosing center panel with gilt fleuron in corners and center lozenge formed by 4 impressions of the corner tool, front cover additionally stamped with title at top, expertly rebacked; Volume 2 159x97 mm, in later 19th-century blind- and gilt-tooled black morocco artfully imitating the binding on Volume 1; titles lightly soiled, first volume with repaired wormholes in blank lower outer corner of opening leaves and a few minor stains on fore edges, second volume with blank upper outer corner of opening leaves restored and dampstaining in lower margin of last several leaves. (Venice: House of Aldus and Andrea of Asola, April 1524)
Third and last Aldine edition. Renouard, page 98(1); New UCLA 226. Volume 2 was once in the collection of the Scottish antiquary and librarian David Laing and sold as lot 1529 in his sale at Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 12 May 1879, to the Greek diplomat and bibliophile John Gennadius (1844-1932), who had it rebound to match his copy of Volume 1. The set was sold as lot 1525 in the Gennadius sale at the same house, 28 March 1895. With the bookplates of Giorgio di Veroli (sale, Parke-Bernet, 28 February 1956, lot 433).
