Quadragesimale de reditu peccatoris ad Deum.

Chancery folio (295x220 mm). Collation: [*]², a-z⁸, aa-nn⁸, oo⁶. [296] leaves. Text in two columns, 49 lines. Type: 2:79G. Blank space for capitals, with printed guide letters. Woodcut portrait of the author on fol. [*]1v. Two Lombard initials supplied in blue with red penwork decoration (fols. a3r and n8v), two plain blue initials on fol. q5v, yellow capital strokes on a few leaves only. Sixteenth-century manuscript foliation. Contemporary Italian limp vellum wallet binding; a back cover extended to form an overlapping fore-edge flap, six large stars of David made of brown leather thongs sewn onto the outer fore-corners of covers and top and bottom of flap, toggle of rolled leather attached to flap by twisted thong (the toggle and its attachment skilfully restored), fastening onto twisted tawed leather loop sewn through spine. Title written in ink in a contemporary hand on the upper and rear covers; many deckle edges preserved. In a folding cloth case with title in gilt on a letteringpiece. Outstanding copy still in its original condition. Old restoration to the upper outer corner of the first leaf, upper outer corners of the first few leaves softened by the rubbing of the brown leather thongs, marginal dampstain in last few quires, last leaf slightly stained, fols. nn2, nn7, nn8 and oo1 lightly browned. Manuscript chapter headings supplied in a neat contemporary hand in the upper margins of the rectos of fols. a3-n8; contemporary manuscript entry in a different hand added to table on fol. [*]2r; a few contemporary marginalia and underlinings in both hands, a lengthy note on fols. e8v-f1r.

Provenance: ‘LCA' (pencilled initials on the front pastedown); Nicholas Rauch, Manuscrits, incunables,xvi-xix siècle, livres modernes, Genève, 16-18 May 1960, lot 75; Lathrop C. Harper, Catalogue 25. Rare Books, Manuscripts and Fine Bindings, New York 1964, no. 53; Bibliothek Otto Schäfer Schweinfurt (Sotheby's, The Collection of Otto Schäfer, New York, 8 December 1994, lot 142); to Bernard Quaritch; Helmut N. Friedlaender (1913-2008; exlibris on the front pastedown; Christie's, The Helmut N. Friedlaender Library, New York, 23 April 2001, lot 90); Livio Ambrogio collection.

A truly remarkable copy, in its original portfolio binding, of the first and only edition of this collection of thirty-eight Lenten sermons by the well-known Florentine Servite Paolo Attavanti (recorded also as Paulus Florentinus), a contemporary of Savonarola highly praised by Marsilio Ficino for his erudition and eloquence.
The work also goes under the title of Quadragesimale Dantesco, because no fewer than 1254 verses of the Commedia are cited, accompanied by Attavanti's commentary. The quotations in the text are taken from the Nidobeatina edition of 1478, also published in Milan. The volume includes at the beginning the woodcut profile portrait of a cleric writing at his desk within an architectural border, identified as Attavanti by the initials at the bottom ‘m.p.f.o.s.s.' (i.e. Magister Paulus Florentinus Ordinis Sancti Spiritus) and by the patriarchal cross on his robe and above the lintel. This woodcut is considered to be the first portrait of an author in a printed book, and one of the finest Milanese achievements in woodcut. The block was first used in the edition of the Breviarium totius juris canonici by Attavanti, published by the German printers Scinzenzeler and Pachel on 28 August 1479, a few weeks before the appearance of the Quadragesimale.