Boccaccio, Il Decamerone, Venice, heirs of Aldus, 1522, eighteenth-century Dutch red morocco gilt

Boccaccio, Giovanni. Il Decamerone di m. Giovanni Boccaccio; novamente corretto con tre novelle aggiunte. (Venice: in the house of Aldo Manuzio & Andrea Torresano, 1522)

The first Aldine edition; the text was prepared by Aldo Manuzio before his death, and was subsequently used as the basis for the famous Giuntina of 1527 (the Aldine copy used by the Giunta typesetters is now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana). Gian Francesco Torresano provides a list of variant readings at the end of the volume, treating this vernacular text in the same way as a classical one; indeed, this is one of the few works in the vernacular to be printed by him.

4to (200 x 122 mm). Italic type, 39 lines plus headline. collation: a-z⁸ A-N⁸ O¹⁰ P-Q⁸ R⁴ S⁶: 326 leaves, R4 blank. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso.

binding: Eighteenth-century Dutch red morocco gilt (211 x 138 mm), two rectangular frames enclosing drawer-handle and pointillé center and corner decoration, spine gilt in compartments with green morocco lettering-pieces (one stating "edizione non castrata"), gilt edges. (Extremities and joints very slightly rubbed.)

provenance: Alberti Moeys, inscription on final leaf with the date 1612 and the motto "sans varier" — [George Kolkhorst], sale, Replica Shoes 's, London, 4 April 1949, lot 140, £26, to Berson — Georges Heilbrun, Paris, Catalogue 26 (1966), item