[MONTERCHI (Giuseppe)]

Scelta de medaglioni piu rari nella Bibliotheca dell' eminentiss. et reverendiss. principe il signor Cardinale Gasparo Carpegna. Rome: Gio. Battista Bussotti, 1679

BOUND FOR BIBLIOPHILE AND ART COLLECTOR PAULO VAN UCHELEN

Engraved title, added, three full page plates and 20 engravings of obverse and reverse of medals.

4to (240 x 160mm). 84pp. [2]ff. Contemporary gilt ivory vellum over paste-board, covers panelled with double fillets, central panel with a crown stamp at each corner, spine with ornament in each compartment, title lettered in ink, sprinkled edges; bound for Paolo van Uchelen, probably by Albert Magnus - see below (covers a trifle soiled), 1679.

£1,500.00

First edition of the catalogue of rare coins from the collection of Cardinal Gaspero Carpegna (1625-1714), edited by the Roman numismatist Giuseppe Monterchi (born c.1630).

Much of Cardinal Carpegna’s collection is now housed in the Medagliere of the Vatican Library; it was acquired in 1741/3 by Pope Benedict XIV and included not only coins and medals, but also thousands of tesserae, cameos, small bronzes and jewels. However, many important objects were plundered during the Napoleonic era and are now found in the Louvre.

The copy of the Amsterdam merchant, bibliophile and art collector Paulo van Uchelen (d. 1702) and likely bound for him by the great Dutch binder Albert Magnus in ‘horn’ or vellum of a deep yellow colour.

As Fontaine Verwey states, van Uchelen ‘had very pronounced ideas’ about how his books should be bound. The 1703 sale catalogue notes that almost all his books were ‘neatly bound in ‘horn’, the spine and boards neatly gilded, and all the bindings so similar that the like of it has never been seen in this country’. Fontaine Verwey continues, ‘this similarity which is so strongly emphasized, indicates that van Uchelen had his books bound, or rebound, in accordance with his own instructions. He must have had a permanent binder to do this. It would not be surprising if this had been Albert Magnus’.

Van Uchelen was also once the owner of Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance (c. 1664), now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Provenance: Paulo van Uchelen (d. 1702) (see above).

[Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753) with his brief ink purchase note on fly-leaf?] Although the binding does not have the usual addition of Fountaine’s crest at the head of the spine, a number of van Uchelen’s books were bought by Fountaine, at or soon after the sale, including one at the Folger bound in the same way (Olaus Magnus, Historia delle genti… Venice, 1565; DL45.M1I7 1565 Cage).

Patricia Milne-Henderson (1935-2019), art historian and collector of numismatic books, with her bookplate.

Dekesel M 143. H. de la Fontaine Verwey ‘The binder Albert Magnus and the collectors of his age’, in Quaerendo, vol I, no 3 July 1971, pp. 158-178. Catalogus van de treffelijke vergadering van kunst en boeken van … Paulus van Uchelen, Amsterdam, 1703

Stock No.
253125