Campanus's Opera

Campanus's Opera
Eucharius Silber for Michael Fernus, 1495
CAMPANUS, Johannes Andreas (c.1429-1477). Opera. Rome: Eucharius Silber for Michael Fernus, 31 October 1495.

First edition of the works of Giovanni Antonio Campano. A churchman, humanist, and orator, Campano was active as a teacher of rhetoric and an advocate before becoming Bishop of Crotone in 1463 and serving as papal governor of Todi in 1472-1474. His extensive writings include treatises, orations, letters, epitaphs and epigrams, a life of Pope Pius II, and a long biography of Braccio Fortebraccci, a condottiere and count of Motone. Campano’s friend, Michele Ferno, who edited this volume of his works, provides a life of its author and copious introductory texts and editorial comments. Eucharius Silber, originally from Würzburg, Germany, printed in Rome from 1480 into the early sixteenth century. His edition of Campano's works contains two woodcut illustrations: on the title page a large bell with xylographic inscriptions—a play on the author’s name—and a large woodcut on F4, each containing the device HAE (Eucharius Argenteus Herbipolensis). Dibdin, writing about the Spencer copy of this edition, writes that it is “one of the most provokingly capricious volumes, in respect to signatures, ever printed.” HC 4286 = HC(Add) 4287; BMC IV 117; GW 5939; BSB-Ink C-63; Bod-inc C-036; IGI 2383; CIBN C-36; Goff C-73; ISTC ic00073000; Dibdin Spenceriana 1075.

Super-chancery folio (315 x 210mm). 304 leaves. Two woodcut illustrations, white-on black woodcut initials (occasional minor dampstains to lower margins, first three leaves with minor paper flaws to lower blank corners). Contemporary Italian blind-stamped morocco over wooden boards, four clasps catching on back cover, front flyleaf cut from a large-format Humanistic manuscript (slight worming to front and back turn-ins). Provenance: contemporary marginal annotations in humanistic cursive – “S.C.R” stamped on front flyleaf – acquired from H.P. Kraus, New York, 13 February 1958.