Date of purchase: April 26th, 2022
Published: Ventiis, Ioan. Gryphius Date of publication: 1558
Description: vellum spine with marbled paper on front and back boards, paper stickers on spine containing title and what seems to be a filing number. mixture of roman and italic type inside. the type is pressed hard into the page, you can feel the impressions as you leaf through the book. the book is generally a little warped. watermark of griffin on page across from title page.
The page layouts are generally beautiful, there are drop caps and the main latin text is set in italic type, the pages are bright
virtute duce comite fortuna is the motto around the title page engraving, apparently the motto of Institut d’études politiques de Lyon and the Accorretti family.
Why I bought: when I opened it up, I found it to be beautiful. I was of course attracted to its age
How I bought it: I ran up the steps to the bookstore from lunch at the Ricci winery, where I had been in a bad mood because Ron (some annoying dutch guy who left finance for Montepulciano) had been regaling us at length with his fringe historical theories, which incidentally were annoying Bettina, our tour guide.
The man who owns the shop is called Lorenzo Rago and he spoke in a ponderous voice:
“For you…. sixty”
I left in a rush to buy it before we left Montepulciano for Pienza, comes with a letter of ‘authenticity’ which is stored with my scrap paper and ephemera from the trip to Italy.
He didn’t accept card so I ran out to an ATM in an alley.