ANACREON.
Anakreontos Teiou mele praefixo commentario quo poëtae genus traditur et bibliotheca Anacreonteia adumbratur.
Parma, in aedibus Palatinis [Typis Bodonianis], 1791. 16mo in 4s (15 x 11 cm). With a small engraved portrait of Anacreon in a roundel on the title-page, a small engraved portrait of the dedicatee J. N. de Azara in a roundel on the dedication page. Part of the text is set in Greek type. Contemporary gold-tooled green morocco with the title lettered in gold on the spine, gold-tooled board edges and turn-ins, shiny pink endpapers, with a frame of small silver leaves mounted on the pastedowns. [4], CXVIII, [2], 111, [1] pp.
€ 6,500
Beautiful copy of Anacreon's poems, printed in Greek and Latin capitals that Bodoni had designed and cut especially for his Anacreon editions. The first of these splendid editions was printed in 1785. Our copy is one of 150 printed. A first 8vo edition was printed by Bodoni in 1784, but the 1785 and 1791 editions are by far the most gorgeous and from a philological viewpoint the best. Brooks (no. 421) furthermore mentions a 16mo-edition, also printed in 1791. The book aroused the admiration of the famous bibliographer Dibdin who wrote in his classic bibliography (Greek and Latin classics, p. 265): "The (Bodoni) edition of 1785 (and 1791) is printed in capital letters, and more elegant and exquisitely finished productions cannot be conceived".
Our copy comes from the library of the Comte D. Boutourlin (1763-1829), a Russian soldier, military historian, politician and librarian of the Imperial Russian Library. He was one of the most outstanding book collectors of 19th-century Russia and he formed an important library which was unfortunately destroyed during the burning of Moscow in 1812. His second large collection, of which a catalogue was published in 1831 in 200 copies, was formed during his retirement in Florence. It contained 244 important early manuscripts, 964 15th-century books (many of which were unrecorded), a very complete Bodoni collection, and other outstanding items, 7929 in all. The book was later owned by the Comte Chandon de Briailles, whose bookplate is pasted on first flyleaf: "Au Conte Chandon de Briailles". This is most likely Raoul Chandon de Briailles (1850-1908), historian and wine merchant (founder of the Chandon de Briailles mark of champagne), part of whose rich library was bequeathed to the Médiathèque at Épernay.
With the large armorial bookplate of Comte Chandon D. Boutourlin on the verso of the first free flyleaf and the bookplate of Comte de Briailles on the recto of the second free flyleaf. The binding shows very slight signs of wear, internally only very slightly foxed. Otherwise in very good condition. Brooks 422; De Lama II, p. 66; Giani, Cat., p. 40, no. 17; Palaia & Moscatelli 141; Quand la simplicité devient art, 46; cf. Catalogue de la Bibliothèque de son Exc. M. le Comte D. Boutourlin (Florence, 1831).
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