Continental
Contact Alex Day, Andrea Mazzocchi, Jonathan Harrison or Sally Deegan
Our Continental department specialises in incunabula, Greek and Latin classics, early vernacular imprints, and notable texts from the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern era, with a specific section devoted to medieval manuscripts, fragments, and illuminations.
We regularly issue lists and catalogues, offering a wide variety of literary, historical, and philosophical books printed in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Woodcuts, early engravings, notable bindings, notable marginalia, rare manuscript or printed survivals, and books with a remarkable provenance are among our keenest interests and feature regularly in our stock.
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URCEO, Antonio [or Codro].
Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur. Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat. Epistolae. ...
Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502.
First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts.
£3000
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SIMONETTA, Bonifacio.
De Christiane Fidei et Romanorum Pontificum Persecutionibus.
(Colophon:) Basel, Nicolaus Kesler, 1509.
A beautiful copy of the second edition of Simonetta’s principal work, from the library of Christian VI (1699–1746), King of Denmark and Norway, and containing an early yet intriguing reference to the New World.
£4500
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SBRUGLIO, Riccardo.
Richardi Sbrulii equitis Foroiuliani Cesareiq[ue] poete ad magnificu[m] atq[ue] illustrem Maximilianu[m]...
[Colophon:] Augsburg, Hans von Erfurt, 1519.
First, very rare, edition, of Sbruglio’s Latin poems addressed to Maximilianus Transylvanus, published in the year that Charles V became Holy Roman Emperor. A native of Cividale in northern Italy, Sbruglio (c. 1480 – after 1525) studied and taught at Wittenberg (where the rector compared...
£1800
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LUTHER, Martin.
Eyn Sendbriff … uber die frage. Ob auch yemandt, on glawben verstorben selig werden müge &c. An Er Hansen...
[Wittenberg, N. Schirlentz, 1522].
First edition, rare, of a momentous letter on predestination addressed by Luther to his friend Hans von Rechenberg.
£1500
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[ROZIER.]
Le rozier historial de France contenant deux roziers. Le p[re]mier rozier contient plusieurs belles rozes et boutons...
Paris, [Gilles Couteau for François Regnault,] 26 February 1522 [i.e. 1523].
First edition, the very handsome Fairfax-Murray copy, of the Rozier historial de France.
£25000
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APPIAN of Alexandria.
Civili. Appiano Alessandrino delle guerre civili de Romani tradotto da M. Alessandro Braccio secretario...
Venice, [Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio for Federico Torresano, April] 1538.
A much-annotated copy of these late Aldine Press productions, the two complementary works on the history of Rome’s wars by Appianus in the Italian translation of Alessandro Braccio (or Braccesi), which had first appeared in 1519 – the first vernacular versions.
£3000
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EPIPHANIUS.
Κατα αιρεσεων ογδοηκοτα το επικληθεν Παναριον … Contra octoginta haereses...
Basel, [Johann Herwagen, 1544].
Editio princeps of the Greek text of Epiphanius’s great compendium of heresies, in a particularly attractive and well-preserved contemporary pigskin binding.
£5000
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[SAVONAROLA]. POLITO, Ambrogio Caterino.
Discorso … contra la dottrina, et le profetie di Fra Girolamo Savonarola.
Venice, Giolito, 1548.
First edition, very rare (‘raro e ricercato’, Bongi), of a condemnation of Savonarola’s theology, doctrine and prophecies by a former Savonarola acolyte, ‘one of the most fiery Catholic polemicists of his times’ (ibid., our translation), who four years earlier had published a...
£1500
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BLANCHON, Jacques.
Iacobi Blanchoni ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum beneventanum abbatem selestensem defensionum liber.
Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1550.
First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly-printed de Tournes edition. Ostensibly a simple series of remarks against the theses of the (presumably sternly Scholastic) abbot of Selestan, this is a tract of Renaissance moral philosophy. The theme of...
£950
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ALBERTI, Leon Battista.
El Momo. La moral e muy graciosa historia del Momo; compuesta en Latin por el docto varon Leon Bapista...
Alcalá de Henares, Joan Mey Flandro, 1553.
First edition in Spanish of Alberti’s Momus [or De principe], translated by Augustín de Almaçan and with an introductory 8-page Exposición by the Toledo ascetic writer and scholar Alejo Venegas (1495?–1554?).
£3800
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STRAPAROLA, Giovanfrancesco.
Le piacevoli notti di messer Giovanfrancesco Straparola da Caravaggio.
Venice, Domenico Giglio, 1558.
An early edition of both volumes of Straparola’s Facetious nights, first published in 1550–53.
£2750
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CAVALCANTI, Bartolomeo.
La retorica … divisa in sette libri, dove si contiene tutto quello, che appartiene all’arte Oratoria. In...
Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559.
Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric. The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172).
£2250
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RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio.
Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...
Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562.
Annotated copy, once owned by a music book collector, of the third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the very divisive ‘questione d’amore’ hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature.
£2800
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AMBROSE of Milan, AUGUSTINE, and HIERONYMUS.
De virginitate opuscula Sanctorum doctorum, Ambrosii, Hieronymi et Augustini....
Rome, Paolo Manuzio, 1563.
Four first editions from Paolo Manuzio’s Roman press of Latin and Greek patristic texts on virginity, bound together at an early stage and annotated by Bernardino Pino, a cleric, courtier, dramatist, and humanist at the court of the Duke of Urbino.
£4000
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MIRANDULA (or MIRANDOLA), Ottaviano.
Illustrium poetarum flores.
Antwerp, Joannes Bellerus, 1563.
A remarkable copy, with numerous and eloquent contemporary annotations and additions in a French hand, of a scarce edition of an extremely popular collection of quotes and passages from classics of poetry, published by the renowned Flemish printer and composer Joannes Bellerus (Jean Bellère,...
£1950
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ARNIGIO, Bartolomeo.
Rime dell’Arnigio per la ill[ustre] signora Claudia Martinenga.
Brescia, Giovanni Battista Bozzola, 1566.
First edition of Bartolomeo Arnigio’s collection of poems addressed to Claudia Martinengo, wife to Ludovico Martinengo della Pallata, an important association copy presented by the author to fellow poet Antonio Beffa Negrini.
£1750
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MORI, Ascanio de’.
Giuoco piacevole.
Mantua, Giacomo Ruffinello, 1575.
First edition of an uncommon Renaissance collection of tales in prose and verse, set in the Lombard city of Brescia during the Carnival of the ‘prosperous and peaceful’ year 1566, employing the narrative frame canonised by Boccaccio in the Decameron, though with pointedly opposed features.
£950
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[CAESAR.] RAMUS, Petrus (Pierre de la RAMÉE).
Liber de militia C. Julii Caesaris, cum praefatione Joannis Thomae Freigii.
Frankfurt, heirs of Andreas Wechel, 1584.
An attractively bound copy of Ramus’s uncommon treatise on Caesar’s military tactics, with unusual edge decoration. The humanist Petrus Ramus (1515–1572) published widely on classical history and grammar while teaching at the Collège de France. He was briefly forced from his post after...
£450
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CASTIGLIONE, Giacomo, and Giuseppe CASTIGLIONE.
Iacobi Castalionis Romani. Ios. f oratio in funere Magdalenae matris habita...
Rome, Luigi Zannetti, 1598.
Rare first and only edition, a presentation copy, on the deaths of Magdalena Castiglione and her daughter Lucretia, written by Magdalena’s husband and her son and including a woodcut portrait of mother and daughter in rich contemporary dress.
£1250
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ROSSI, Ottavio, and Bartolomeo FONTANA, compiler.
Lettere del Sig. Ottavio Rossi. Raccolte da Bartolomeo Fontana ...
Brescia, Bartolomeo Fontana, 1621.
First edition of over 150 letters by the poet and scholar Ottavio Rossi (1570–1630), printed in his native city of Brescia and including a letter to the painter Palma Giovane, our copy with a contemporary manuscript note on the artist’s final moments written mere days after his death.
£1250