Cresci, Giovanni Francesco

CRESCI, Giovanni Francesco (1534-1614). Essemplare di plu sorti lettere di M. Gio Francesco Cresci Milanese, Scrittore della Libraria Apostolica. Rome: Antonio Blado for the author, 1568.
Oblong 4 o (153 x 210 mm ). 44 leaves. Typographic title and text in italic type, printed within four different sets of four-part woodcut borders, 53 woodcut writing samples within fine woodcut arabesque borders, the samples cut by Giovan Francesco Aureri da Crema and concluding with 14 pages of white-on-black roman lettering including a 12-page alphabet in large capitals; 6 historiated woodcut initials of which two from a slightly larger series used in two writing samples, and one arabesque initial, G1r and H4v with arabesque ornaments only. (Large stamp on one plate, some ink stains, a few with associated burn.) 18th-century Italian vellum. Provenance: acquired from H.P. Kraus, 1977.
Fourth edition. Cresci, a Milanese who spent most of his life in Rome, was copyist in the Vatican Library from 1556 to 1570 and later supported himself as a writing master. He was the author of three popular writing-books, of which the Essemplare was the first and most revolutionary. Interestingly, Cresci chose the woodcut relief process to reproduce his writing samples because he found it more faithful to the original. The woodcutter Francesco Aureri da Crema is known only from this work and Cresci's next book, Il perfetto scrittore (1570). RARE: according to American Book Prices Current only one copy of the first edition has sold in the last 35 years: Christie's New York, 9 June 1999, lot 26. Johnson p. 37:10; A.S. Osley, Luminario--an introduction to the Italian writing-books of the 16th and 17th centuries (Nieuwkoop 1972), pp. 69-76; Osley, Scribes and Sources--Handbook of the Chancery Hand in the 16th century (Boston 1980). pp. 114-16; Morison,S. Early Italian Writing Books Renais