QUINTILIANUS

Institutiones Oratoriae. Milan, Antonius Zarotus, 9 June

      Folio (315 x 213mm.). 206 leaves. 41 lines, roman letter, spaces left for Greek words. 17th century mottled calf gilt, gilt and panelled back, morocco labels, r.e. (joints weak). 1476 Fourth edition of this classic work which became one of the most important texts of the Renaissance, "the only systematic pedagogical treatise of antiquity to be preserved in which Quintilian traces the path towards an ideal educational goal, where the skills of the orator are not divorced from the other tasks of forming his mind and developing his virtues" (Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance, ed. J. R. Hale, p. 272). Provenance. The copy of Egidio Sacchetti who has supplied his own ink-written title-page, with armorial, and three-page index. There are also numerous contemporary manuscript marginalia which are also almost certainly in the same hand. Armorial book-plate of William Horatio Crawford (1812-1888), of Cork, and benefactor of the Municipal Art Gallery. Signature on fly-leaf (dated 1894) of Richard C. Jackson, President of the Dante Society, who has recorded in two long notes that this copy was lot 2602 in the Crawford sale on 23 March 1891. Many lower corners stained (sometimes quite dark), lower margin of title-page cut away and replaced with later paper. HCR 13648. BMC VI, 713. Goff Q27.