Boccaccio (Giovanni) Laberinto d'amore...Con una epistola á Messer Pino de Rossi confortatoria, collation: A-I⁸, mostly in Italic type, initial spaces with guide-letters, a few instances of marginalia in an early hand, title with later inscription 'A/-' to head in faint purple pencil, light soiling to title, foxing, often marginal, the occasional small stain, lacking front free endpapers, handsome contemporary Venetian panelled red morocco over pasteboards, gilt, central panels decorated with two strapwork-pattern tools and with initials ‘F-G-T’ to upper cover and ‘M-A-G-D’ to the lower, all within a wide scrolling border of acorns and foliage within single filets and an outer border of blind-stamped double and triple filets, spine with 3 raised bands, second compartment with title in ink in an early hand, edges gilt and gauffered, missing ties, sympathetic repairs to joint ends, a few small wormholes to spine ends and joints, little rubbed and scuffed in places, some wear to corners, 8vo (160 x 95mm.), Florence, [Heirs of Filippo Giunta], 1525.

⁂ The rare Giunta edition of one of the most influential works by Boccaccio. The binding was in all likelihood produced in a Venetian workshop, owing to the lettering employed in the inscriptions of the unknown wealthy patron, as well as the use of the knot tool, a fairly common tool design used by various Venetian binders. This tool even came to act as a sort of signature of the talented Mendoza Binder, so-named because of his main client, the Spanish ambassador Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (see, for example, The Henry Davis Gift, no. 262, for a binding by the Mendoza Binder dated to c.1523, bearing the same knot-tool and an inscription in a similar pattern). The wide scrolling border framing the covers is formed with leaf and acorn tools, decorative motifs likewise used in various Venetian binders' workshops in the first decades of the Cinquecento.

Provenance: Francesco Riccardi de Vernaccia (b. 1794; engraved bookplate to pastedown); Gustavo Camillo Galletti (1805-1868; small ink-stamp to title); Baron Horace de Landau (1824-1903; book-label to pastedown, with stamped number ‘47788’).

Literature: Adams B2182; EDIT 16 CNCE 6267.