Add MS 57911

GAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS: 'De vita duodecim Caesarum'; Italy, late 15th cent. Latin. 16th-cent. note inside the upper board 'Emptus.xxxv.B.'. Near contemporary Italian paper title pasted in (f. iv). Owned by Benoit Le Court, a 16th-cent. jurist and humanist from Lyons, whose coat of arms is stamped at the centre of each cover panel. The 16th-cent. purchase note inside the upper board is similar to notes in other manuscripts from his library. See D. Gid, Catalogue des reliures françoises estampées à froid XVe - XVe siècle de la Bibliothèque Mazarine (1984), nos. 544 bis and 601. Purchased from Maggs Bros., 13 March 1973.

Paper; ff. iii+179. Sec. fol.: 'provincia'. 231 x 260mm. Original paper pastedowns and single flyleaves to front and back (ff. i-ii, iii and v) with intruded modern flyleaf to front. Gatherings (18) of 10 (xviii10 lacks 10, blank). Pricked and ruled (single bounding lines) in lead point for single columns of 30 lines. Written space 161 x 100mm. Script is a humanistic cursive book script, with continuation lettering in rustic capitals. Horizontal catchwords and traces of quire signatures. Guide-letters for initials. Unidentifiable watermark at the centre of the gutter. 16th-cent. blind-tooled and roll-stamped brown calf leather binding on wooden boards, sewn on six split cords, probably made in Lyons for Le Court, with his coat of arms (azur two and one mullets or in a shield-shell cartouche) stamped on the cover. See Gid, nos 59, 367, 387, 466, 544 bis, 601. The roll-stamped decoration features Renaissance ornaments which were also common in English binding rolls around 1535 and 1540. See Oldham, English Blind-Stamped Bindings (1952), pl. xli, nos. 645-648 and 660-661.

Decoration consists of 4/6 line pen-flourished initials in alternating blue and red. Rubrics, continuation lettering, litterae notabiliores, running heads and notabilia in red.