Copy number: D-171(1)

Wanting the blank leaf [D8].

Binding: Late fifteenth or first quarter of the sixteenth century, North Italian (Padua) blind-tooled brown goatskin over wooden boards bevelled inwards. Four clasps, secured by two star nails placed vertically and hinged on the upper cover, now lost; catches of a pointed trefoil form secured by those nails; rebacked by R. Riley, Feb. 1920. Formerly chained: staple-marks of a hasp at the foot of the upper cover. On both covers triple fillets form four concentric frames. A circular rayed sun stamp and a small flower-petal stamp alternate within the first and third frames; a tool of two flower-petals is repeated within the second. The inner rectangle is decorated with the rayed sun and small flower-petal between pyramidal and cruciform constructions of knotwork. Edges dark green. Double dark green headbands. Sewn on three split thongs. New endleaves. See also De Marinis, Legatura, II no. 1525. ‘The sun and vineleaf shop'; for this and other bindings from the same shop see A. Hobson, ‘Bookbinding in Padua in the Fifteenth Century', in Incunabula, ed. Davies, 389-420, at 408.

Size: 352 × 243 × 67 mm.

Size of leaf: 338 × 232 mm.

Marginal notes in a small fifteenth-century hand, mainly commenting on the text; manuscript signatures of the gatherings.

On [b1r] an eight-line Venetian initial ‘C' is supplied in pink, edged on the outside in red and on the inside in yellow, on a gold and blue ground, with foliate extensions into the margins in blue and pink, and with gold dots; also a four-line initial ‘P' is supplied in blue edged in gold. Other initials, some with red pen-work infill and extensions into the margins, and paragraph marks are supplied in red or blue. Capital strokes in red.

Provenance: Würzburg, Bavaria, Conventual Franciscans, Inventio crucis/Sancta crux; an inscription on [a2r] in a seventeenth-century hand: ‘De bibliotheca Fratrum Minorum Conuentualium S. Francisci Herbipoli'. Albert Ehrman (1890-1969); armorial book-plate; purchased, as his first incunable, from E. S. Fowler, Mar. 1920, for £5. 5. 0; accession no. ‘129'. Presented in 1978 by John Ehrman.

SHELFMARK: Broxb. 18.7.