So: I bought a forgery, certainly the Dealer I bought it from didn’t know, and I was just a little to curious to miss it. “SORTE TANDEM”

963G Thomaso Porcacchi approximately 1530-1585?, A CURIOUS FORGERY

Historia dell’origine et successione dell’Illustrissima famiglia Malaspina descritta da Thomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione Aretino et mandata in luce da Aurora Bianca d’Este sua consorte.

Presso Girolamo Discepolo & fratelli, Verona, 1585                                       $2,600

Quarto 8 X 5 3/4 ‡4 ‡‡2 A3,(no Lacuna) B-Z4, AA-FF4 GG2, a-b4,c3 final Leaf c4 is blank and lacking.       First and only edition Bonding in full modern parchment with gold title on the spine

The image of the titler page above is from the book I have. Now here is the title of the Getty copy .

OK WHAT NOW?

So, paper,type,ink: The paper looks ok, but the chain lines are vertical? and the next 3 leaves of signature ≠ have horizontal chain lines.

In the rest of the book the chain lines are ALL Horizontal

So The title page is quite suspect. The type is only slightly different. But the Printers Markis curiously similar yet different!

Winged and blindfolded putto in the act of throwing three dice on a table. On the ground open book, bow and broken arrows.

So obviously  the mark in my book, I will call it “SORTE TANDEM”  is much cruder than that of the Getty copy which we will call “FORTUNA” I guess that whoever made the woodcut of “Sorte Tandem”, was looking at the frame of the image and did a pretty decent copy of it , although the image is certainly from a wood cut and there for couldn’t attain the fineness of the “Fortuna”  and perhaps that is why the center image is changed? So why would some one go to this effort to make this semi reproduction of the title  of a book such as this?  That I can’t say , But I can say if I couldn’t have see other copies I would have not been so discerning.

This is a very clean copy, curoiusly, Leaves ‡3 and ‡‡1 and two and a1-4 are shorter and narrower that all the other leaves.  Yet the water mark and chain lines match?

The Malaspina were a noble Italian family of langobard origin descended from Boniface I, Margrave of Tuscany through the Obertenghi line, which ruled Lunigiana from the 13th to the 14th century through many feuds and, since the 14th century, the marquisate of Massa and lordship of Carrara, then Duchy of Massa and Carrara, and latterly Principality of Massa and Marquisate of Carrara.Born in a poor family of Val di Chiana , Tommaso Porcacchi was able to study thanks to the patronage of Duke Cosimo I. He settled in Florence where he met humanist Lodovico Domenichi, who allowed him to publish his first works, a Virgil’s Life, and the translation of the Fourth Book of the Aeneid . Thanks to Domenichi’s recommendation, Porcacchi contacted the great publisher of works in the vulgar language Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari , so that in 1559 Porcacchi moved to Venice , a city where he married (married the Bianca d’Este poet) and stayed up to death.In the lagoon town of Porcacchi he wrote of numerous subjects: geographical, historical, archaeological; Published translations from Greek and Latin (eg Quinto Curzio Rufo ), and a collection of Greek historians , who largely translated himself. As a text editor in vernacular Porcacchi had the intention to do useful activities in Counter-Reformation . His work was very extensive: he also cared for the labyrinths of Boccaccio’s love labyrinth , the Florentine Stories of Guicciardini , the Arcadia of Sannazaro , the Rime and the Asolani of Bembo , the omnipotent work of Delminio and many others. Of 1584 is the publication of the new Vocabulary , published together with Fabrica by Francesco Alunno.He wrote erudite works, the most important of which being a treatise on the islands and a work of ethnology on funerals and genealogies . Carpané, Annali delle Tipografie Veronese del ‘500, 294.