Giovanni Battista Raimondo de Silva, Amori Stravaganti, or “Vita di Anna Bolena”, in Italian, manuscript on paper [Italy, eighteenth century]

Giovanni Battista Raimondo de Silva, Amori Stravaganti, or Vita di Anna Bolena, in Italian, manuscript on paper [Italy, eighteenth century]

398 leaves (plus a contemporary paper endleaf at front and back), evidently complete, single column of approximately 25 lines in a scrawling hand, significant names sometimes in larger rounded script, the volume opening with title-page and a single leaf with contents list, some slight inkburn (but not affecting legibility of text), speckled edges, various book-trade marks on pastedowns, overall good and clean condition, 188 by 130mm; contemporary white parchment over thin pasteboards, with Vita di Anna Bolena, Rega dInghila in Phillipps hand on spine above earlier XXVIII, paper fragments and clean area in shape of circle from Phillipps labels once on spine

Provenance:

1. Frederick North (1766-1827), 5th Earl Guildford, politician, British governor of Ceylon, traveller and formidable book collector, often purchasing entire libraries of ecclesiastical institutions in Italy and Greece with the aim of forming a university on Corfu. However, problems with his will forced the sale of the library by auction at Evans of 93 Pall Mall from 1828-35, including this volume as 8 December 1830, lot 4 (part).

2. Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), manic and obsessive bibliophile as well as the greatest manuscript collector to have ever lived: his MS. 4925 (inscription on front endleaf), and acquired in the Guilford sale along with 1300 other Italian manuscripts from that collection; this one offered by Sothebys in the Phillipps sale, 13 June 1896, lot 630, and again in the same rooms, 29 October 1962, lot 168, to H.W. Edwards, his cat. 106 (1963), no. 47.

Text:

To the passionate Englishman, Thomas Phillipps, this volume contained the Vita di Anna Bolena, but in fact its scope is much wider. It collects together racy and on occasion lurid tales of love in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European courts, uniting those of the royal palace of France, those of the Duchess Mazarin, Madame Colonna, that of Ugo da Montefeltro with Lady Olimpia Maildachini Pamfili among numerous others, with that of Anne Boleyn (this last translating a French text).