Update: These books have been recovered.
The ABAA has recently become aware of a theft which occurred in May from PRPH books. If you have information, or believe you may have been offered either of the items below, please contact Fabrizio Govi (gfabbrig@gmail.com), from whom these books were consigned.
De Chyromantia libri III authoris ciusdam vetustissimi per Joannem DRYANDRUM restituti Marpurgi, anno MDXXXVIII.
Tibet, Antioco (1528)
8vo; 18th-century full vellum over boards, spine with label and gilt title; 138 [i.e. 139], (5, of which the last is a blank) pp. With four full-page chiromantic hands and several zodiacal and planetary illustrations in the text. Some light browning, but a very good copy.
RARE SECOND EDITION (the first printed in Bologna in 1494 is extremely rare and is virtually impossibile to find on the market) of the first comprehensive treatise on palmistry. All the most famous subsequent authors on the subjects are somehow indebted to Tiberti (cf. G. Sabbatini, Bio-bibliografia chiromantica, Reggio Emilia, 1946, pp. 92-94).
This edition, which was reprinted in 1541, does not bear Tiberti’s name on the title-page. The original dedication by Tiberti to Ottavio Ubaldino, earl of Mercatello, is followed by a new dedication addressed by the editor Johannes Dryander to the Mainz nobleman Johann Furderer de Richtenfels. The text of the two Mainz editions differs significantly from that of the first Bologna edition, a thing that can only be explained by the fact that Dryander had not access to the first edition or to the manuscript used as a basis for the first edition; he probably had at hand only a defective manuscript and on several occasions he had to intervene to complete the incomplete text.
Duellum epistolare: Gallie & Italiæ antiquitates summatia complectens. Trophæum Christianissimi galliarum regis Francisci huius nominis primi. Item complures illustrium virorum epistolae ad dominu(m) Symphorianu(m) Camperiu(m).
Campier, Symphorien (ca. 1474-1539) and Barlandus, Hadrian (Adriaan van Baerland, 1486-1538)
Dialogi XLII. Ad profligandam è scholis barbariem utilissimi. Louvain, Pieter Martens van Alst, March, 1524.8vo. (40) leaves. Title within an ornamental woodcut border including the printer’s device.
8vo. (96) leaves. Title printed in red and black and a full-page woodcut at the end showing the author with his patron and his wife kneeling in prayer.
Contemporary blind-stamped calf with lettering on the panels, a bit rubbed, a few small repairs, but a very fine genuine copy with several old entries of ownership on the title-page, among them that of the Order of the Friars Minor Recollect of Ypres (Belgium).
Binding. The two works are bound together in a blind-stamped calf binding made by the Flemish Jacob Clercx de Geel from Antwerp active from about 1510 to 1537. He was succeeded by his son Gheert who was married with Abraham Ortelius’ sister Anna. Gheert used the same panel with the first name of his father erased. In the same period, Jan Tys from Mechelen used a panel with the same design and the same text border but with his own name (cf. Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Exposition de reliures du XIIe siècle à la fin du XVIe: 5 avril - 28 juin 1930, Bruxelles, 1930, no. 192; S. Fogelmark, Flemish and Related Panel-Stamped Bindings. Evidence and Principles, New York, 1990, pp. 145-151, and J.B. Oldham, Blind Panels of English Binders, Cambridge, 1958, p. 16, AM.7, plate VII). On each cover there are two impressions of a panel divided into two rectangles each occupied by three animals (above: dragon, rabbit, dog; below: cattle, eagle, deer) enclosed within the curves of a vine branch. These are surrounded by a frame with the inscription: “Ligat[us] per man[us] / jacobi · clercx · qui · petit · a · malis · / erui · et ·semper / protegi · per · manus · domini” and at each angle a fleur-de-lys (see for a similar binding with the same panels, E.P. Goldschmidt, Gothic and Renaissance Bookbindings, London, 1928), I, p. 209, no. 104). Between these two panels is another panel figuring dancing peasants and a piper (cf. P. Verheyden, De Boerendans op Vlaamsche Boekbanden, in: “De Gulden Passer”, 20, 1942, pp. 209-237). This seems to be the only surviving specimen of the two panels in combination with the frieze of dancers signed by Jacob Clerx (see also L. Indestege, Boekbanden iut vijf eeuven. Catalogus van de tentoonstelling, Gent, 1961, no. 141).