OVID. - Lot 127

OVID. Metamorphoseon libri XV. Antwerp : Christophe Plantin, 1582. - In-16, 120 x 77 : 432 pp. 20 ff. Red morocco, boards decorated with a central gilt fleuron set in a painted geometrical interlace pattern with gilt fleur-de-lis at the corners, the whole framed by a gilt chain wheel with gilt fleur-de-lis at the corners, and by cold fillets, spine with gilt nerves, gilt edges (binding of the first half of the 16th century) Beautiful Plantinian edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Latin, published after the one given by the Italian politician and scholar Andrea Navagero (1483-1529). Copy in red morocco decorated with geometrical interlacing on the boards. It was part of the very fine Catalogue of bindings from the 15th to the 19th century of the Gumuchian bookshop, published in 1929, listed at number 140, with reproduction. AN EXAMPLE OF A FORGED BINDING. Gumuchian states that this is a rare binding "executed in Plantin's own workshop". If we take into consideration the elements that compose it, we can affirm that this is absolutely not the case. The central iron is an Italian iron used in the first half of the sixteenth century; it is found on bindings, particularly Venetian ones, of which the catalogue Arte della legatura a Brera reproduces two examples at numbers 24 and 26. The interlacing decoration on the boards, which is totally fanciful here, is a type of decoration usually found on French bindings of the mid-16th century. The fleur-de-lys at the corners are in two different styles, one solid and the other azure. This leads us to believe that it is indeed a counterfeit binding made without a doubt in the 19th century in order to mislead unsuspecting collectors. It is therefore a rebinding based on an Italian binding from the first half of the 16th century, with a rather simple decoration on the boards of which an interlacing decoration was added in the 19th century. The decoration overlaps the cold frame, which does not correspond to the achievements of the time. Moreover, this decoration was painted in the 20th century, as the photograph in the Gumuchian catalogue does not show any part in colour. Hinges and corners restored, split at the hinge of the second plate, missing head cap. Provenance: Gumuchian Bookshop, cat. XII, no. 140.