De le maraueliose cose del Mondo

Los 32
16.10.2025 10:00UTC +01:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
VeranstaltungsortVereinigtes Königreich, London
Aufgeldsee on Website%
ID 1471955
Los 32 | De le maraueliose cose del Mondo
Schätzwert
$ 120 000 – 180 000
POLO, Marco (1254-1324). De le maraveliose cose del Mondo. Brescia: Battista Farfengo, 20 December 1500.

Second Italian edition: the rarest of the incunable editions of Marco Polo’s travels. The Pierre Bergé copy.

“Marco Polo was a member of a prosperous Venetian family engaged in commerce. He set out with his father and uncle in 1271 on a journey to the East. Starting from Acre the party travelled through Persia and the upper Oxus to the Pamir plateau, and then through Mongolia and the Gobi desert to the extreme north-west of China, reaching Shantung in 1275. Here they sojourned at the Court of Kublai Khan until 1292, finally arriving back in Venice, after travelling through south-east Asia and southern India, in 1295. During his stay in China Marco Polo took an active part in the administration of the country and travelled widely in the Great Khan's service. He saw ‘or obtained knowledge of’ large parts of China, northern Burma, Tibet, Japan, south-east Asia, the East Indies, Ceylon, southern India, Abyssinia, Zanzibar and Madagascar, Siberia and the Arctic” (PMM 39). The story of his travels was dictated by Polo in 1298-89 to Rusticello of Pisa, whilst both were prisoners of the Genoese. Much has been made of the veracity or lack thereof of Marco Polo’s jailtime narrative, but his influence is undeniable. Marco Polo’s “Book of Marvels” captured the European imagination and awoke it to the pleasures of travel for its own sake in a manner almost unprecedented, or at least hardly since the time of Herodotus.

The first printed version appeared in German in 1477, followed by Latin circa 1483-85 and Italian in Venice in 1496. The present publication, is essentially the same as the Venetian edition, but with small changes to the introduction. It features a fine woodcut on the title-page depicting a traveller appearing to seek shelter from a lady. The other incunable editions exist in more than 15 copies each in institutional holdings according to ISTC, whereas this Brescia edition is held by only four libraries: two in Italy (libraries of Brescia and Verona) and two in the United States (the Morgan and the Huntington). Moreover, this copy is the only incunable version of this essential work to appear for public sale in over 30 years, according to the sale records of RBH and ABSA. Church 15; Cordier Bibliotheca Sinica, col 1969; Cordier, Centenaire de Marco Polo 15; Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo (New York, 1903), p.464; Veneziani (Brescia) 211; Sander 5829; GW M34802; Klebs 800.3; PMM 139 (1st Italian); Goff P-904; ISTC ip00904000.

Octavo (152 x 100mm). 64 leaves. Title with large woodcut and ornamental border (about 9 leaves towards the end with a tiny repaired hole, costing a few letters supplied in neat pen facsimile and a little associated paper strengthening). Old paper boards (neatly recased, minor repairs to spine). Red morocco clamshell box, velvet-lined, by Boichot. Provenance: a few initial-letters inked in an early hand – Pierre Bergé (1930-2017; bookplate; his sale, Bergé, 14 December 2018, lot 833).
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