Decimus Junius Juvenalis (late 1st and early 2nd century AD) and Aulus Persius Flaccus (34–62 AD) Satyrae
August 1501 [but ca 1515]

The present edition of Juvenal’s and Persius’s Satyrae is a reprint of Aldus’s 1501 edition published by the Andrea Torresani and the Heirs of Aldus Manutius about 1515. The reprint reproduces the features of the original down to the date of printing, but with the addition of Andrea’s name in the colophon.

The book shown here does not bear any evidence of early provenance, but retains an early brown morocco binding, gilt- and blind-stamped in Italian style in the late 1510s or 1520s. The pasteboards are made of compressed paper from archival documents in vernacular Italian in cursive hands (mercantesca), datable to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century; the free endpapers are on parchment at each end, the endbands have decorative sewing in yellow and brown silk [?] threads, the bookblock edges are gilt and gauffered, and there is evidence of four brown silk fastening ties at fore-edge of boards. Our attempts to attribute the binding to a specific town (possibly Rome or Naples rather than Venice), let alone a known binding workshop, have been unsuccessful so far. For certain, this beautiful binding testifies to the immediate success of the pocket-size Aldine editions amongst Italian wealthy and sophisticated collectors.

Rel.d.51.17, binding