Proue prime fatti a l'aqua forte da N. Lanier a l'eta sua giouenile di sessanta otto anni 1656

[No place] [No Publisher] [c. 1825]. 231 x 147 mms., 31 full-page engraved plates (including the foxed first leaf functioning as title-page), 2 folding engraved plates, bound in early 19th century quarter roan, with "Lanier's Drawing Book 1656" tooled in gilt on spine, plain boards; first plate, with title foxed; many plates marked with "L" in corner area of plate, others arked with "V". This rare volume is comprised of engravings of the drawings of Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola), Giulio Romano, Lodovico Carracci and others. The engravings were made by Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666), who was an eminent art collector and musician in seventeenth-century England. The art historian Jeremy Wood translates the Italian title of the work, Proue prime fatti a l'aqua forte da N: Lanier a l'eta sua giouenile di sessanta otto Anni 1656, into English as "First proofs made in etching" by Nicholas Lanier "at his youthful age of sixty-eight". It is believed that in the early nineteenth century, around 1825, the engraved plates of the seventeenth century were used to create this volume of engravings; the paper in the volume appears to date considerably later than the seventeenth century. What appears to be unique about the present volume is that it seems to be an enlarged version, as it has twenty further plates than the previously known version, which, in each of the two known copies, has only eleven plates, all of which are work by one artist, Parmigianino. Of the eleven-plate version, OCLC says that the book "[c]onsists entirely of etchings from drawings by Parmigianino. The paper and binding both indicate that this is a nineteenth century reprint, possibly ca. 1825, from the original copper plates, with hand tooling on spine. Binder's title on spine: Lanier's drawing book, 1656" (OCLC number 10094746). The two copies of the eleven-plate version found by OCLC are at Stanford University and the University of Virginia. No copy of the book in any form is located in COPAC. The copy on offer appears to be unique, and fortuitously so, in containing twice as many plates as the previously-known issue and as containing multiple artists rather than merely one. The musician and art dealer Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666) was in Italy, specifically Venice, as early as 1610, as a diplomatic courier. "Immediately after the funeral of James I on 7 May 1625 Lanier was dispatched by the new king, Charles I, to Italy, to search out and purchase paintings for the enlargement of the Royal Collection. Through Daniel Nys, a French-born art dealer, agent, and entrepreneur, Lanier made contact with the duke of Mantua, Ferdinando Gonzaga, with a view to buying the extensive and celebrated Mantuan collection. The negotiations were long and tortuous and were not finally completed until 1628; the total price paid for this splendid collection was 68,000 scudi (then about £15,000). During this period Lanier made two separate visits to Italy, being based for the most part in Venice. At the end of his first trip he returned to England with his own portrait by Van Dyck (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). As a result Van Dyck was invited to enter the service of King Charles. Lanier had already begun to collect drawings, both for himself and for his patron Lord Arundel, at a time when such pieces were considered valueless, and was the first to imprint on them a distinctive collector's mark" (Oxford DNB). Samuel Pepys in his diary entry for October 31, 1665, remarks on a visit to his home from Nicholas Lanier (spelling his name "Laneare") and praises his artistic eye. Pepys wrote: "Among other things, Laneare did, at the request of Mr. Hill, bring two or three [of] the finest prints for my wife to see that ever I did see in all my life". The early twentieth-century Pepysian editor G. Gregory Smith glosses the passage succinctly: "Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666) for a second time Master of the King's Music (1660). He was an art connoisseur, and had been commissioned by Charles I to purchase pictures, etc. in Italy for the Royal Collections. He wrote music for masques by Campion and Ben Jonson" (Diary of Samuel Pepys, London, 1905, p. 353). See Ian Spink's article "Lanier in Italy" in Music and Letters (1959); and Jeremy Wood's chapter, "Nicholas Lanier (1588-1666) and the Origins of Drawings Collecting in Stuart England", in Christopher Baker, Caroline Elam, and Genevieve Warwick, editors, Collecting Prints and Drawings in Europe, c. 1500-1750 (2003).