EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Venice From The Library Of John Saks

7. BOOK OF HOURS. Officium Beatæ Mariæ Virginis S. Pii V Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, et Urbani VIII. Auctoritate recognitum. Con l'Uffizio de'Morti, Sette Salmi ed altre diverse Orazioni.

Venetiis: Apud Nicolaum Pezzana. 1758

8vo. (180x106mm) pp. [8], 405, [3]. Six engraved plates, one signed M. Heylbrouck and an engraved vignette to title page. Text in Latin and Italian. Contemporary Italian sheep, covers with elaborately tooled gilt borders, fan sprays at the inner corners. Centre of the boards have leaf motifs and two gilt oval frames with green morocco onlays bearing initials “G.P” (upper cover) and “A.P” (lower cover). Flat spine decorated in gilt with leaf motifs, with three green morocco onlays lettered and decorated in gilt. Edges to boards tooled in gilt. All edges gilt and gauffered with a delicate leaf pattern. Attractive green endpapers. In very good condition with one or two small worn spots. Internally excellent with a little foxing in places. Book label of John Saks loosely inserted along with a slip of paper from Christie’s reading “Lot No. 191/1 10 Jun 1981” when a number of Saks’s books were sold.

Saks (the grandson of the founder of the eponymous shop and a vice president of the family firm) was a Fellow of the Morgan Library and a member of the Grolier Club. His celebrated library was particularly strong in the private presses of Ashendene, Kelmscott and Doves but he also built up a fine collection of eighteenth century Venetian books of which this beautifully bound Book of Hours is a lovely example.

For The Last Holy Roman Emperor And The First King

OF

LOMBARDY-VENETIA

8. [FRANCIS I, Emperor of Austria] Indice del Codice Civile Generale Austriaco secondo l'ordine de' paragrafi

Milano: Dall’ Imperiale regia stamperia. 1825

8vo. 225x145mm. pp. [2], 204. Handsomely bound in contemporary red morocco, gilt. Both covers ornately decorated with fillet borders and delicately tooled lace-like cornerpieces, with the arms of Francis I, Emperor of Austria, King of Lombardy-Venetia to the centre. Spine with five raised bands, compartments decorated with a fine net pattern, second and fourth compartments lettered in gilt. Emerald green silk doublures with borders tooled with gilt acanthus leaf motif, turn-ins decorated with flowing leaf motif. Front pastedown has armorial ex libris of W.A.Foyle, Beeleigh Abbey. All edges gilt. Slight rubbing to extremities and wear to bottom corners but overall a beautiful imperial binding in very good condition.

The Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia was founded in 1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The previous year Napoleon had given up the throne of Italy prompting the Habsburg monarchy to reassert its claim to the Duchy of Milan and the Republic of Venice. Thus, until 1859, a large swathe of northern Italy was under the control of the Emperor of Austria. Francis I (who had been the last Holy Roman Emperor before the dissolution of the Empire by Napoleon in 1806) was the first King of Lombardy-Venetia. This index of the Austrian Civil Code, the laws which governed the Francis’s Empire, was published in Italy (and Italian) for the first time in 1815 with subsequent printings made to incorporate amendments to the law. Few can have been bound so grandly, a quality recognised by William Foyle, one of the great booksellers and collectors of the twentieth century.

[3950]

£950