A small group of Cambridge University Library incunables and an early 16th-century edition decorated by woodcut illustrations and initials brings to light a previously unnoticed dimension to the collecting habits of William Mitchell (1821/22-1908), the elusive donor of a very fine collection of Renaissance German woodcuts to the British Museum (see  Stephen Coppel, William Mitchell (1820-1908) and John Malcolm of Poltalloch (1805-93, in Landmarks in Print Collecting: Connoisseurs and Donors at the British Museum since 1753, ed. Antony Griffiths. London: British Museum Press in association with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, 1996, 159-210; idem, ‘Mitchell, William (1821/2–1908)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66397, accessed 21 June 2010]).

The nine books in the group are all illustrated by woodcuts.  They mainly consist of slim pamphlets containing sermons and treatises by Hieronymus Savonarola printed in Florence by Bartolomeo di Libri, Lorenzo de’ Morgiani, Francesco Bonaccorsi, and Gian Stefano di Carlo da Pavia between 1490 and 1505  (see Inc.5.B.8.8[1974])

They also include a copy of Joannes de Sacro Bosco’s Sphaera, printed at Venice by Guglielmo da Trino on 14 January 1491, is also included [Inc.5.B.3.89[1685]]

A bookplate inscribed “William Mitchell” is found on the pastedowns of six of these books.  It shows the motto “Spernit humum” and a crest issuing out of flames of fire, a phoenix rising proper and holding in the beak an arrow slipped and leaved also proper, semee of mascles sable.  The bookplate is decorated at four corners by a mascle charged by a cross pattée.

My tentative identification of the William Mitchell of the bookplate with the donor of the German woodcuts at the British Museum has been kindly confirmed by Stephen Coppel (private correspondence).  Mitchell’s interest towards the unassuming Savonarola pamphlets was almost certainly stirred up by the presence of the woodcut illustrations which are interesting Italian counterparts of the German prints that he was actively collecting.

I believe William Mitchell also to be the owner of three more incunables that bear two different armorial bookplates which I regard as variants of the previous William Mitchell’s bookplate.

The first variant bookplate is found in two Savonarola’s pamphlets, Inc.5.B.8.8[1984] and F150.c.2.4 respectively.

A decorative border, with the initials “WM” intertwined at the corners, surrounds the roundel inscribed “Arma Guillelmi Mitchell” that encircles unrecorded arms, with crosses pattée and mascles as charges, and the same crest and motto as in the previous bookplate.

The second variant bookplate is found in a copy of the famous princeps edition of Robertus Valturius’s De re militari, printed at Verona, by Johannes Nicolai in 1472 [Inc.2.B.19.1[2158]].

The bookplate bears the same initials, arms, crest and motto, but the inscription “Liber Willelmi Mitchell” gives a Germanic flavour to the name of the owner, who was apparently “born a British subject” in Baden, Germany.

According to Gambier Howe, exemplars of all three bookplates should be found in the Frank Collection at the British Museum (see E.R.J. Gambier Howe, Franks Bequest: Catalogue of British and American book plates bequeathed to the Trustees of the British Museum by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 3 vols. London: 1903-1904, vol. 2, p. 258, nos 20744 or 20745, 20747 or 20748, and 20746).

The Valturius princeps was the first incunable edition to be illustrated by woodcuts of technical or scientific character and therefore an almost obvious and unmissable presence in Mitchell’s woodcut collection.

Mitchell’s copy [Inc.2.B.19.1[2158]] was rubricated and decorated in the late 15^th century by hand, probably in Germany,

and has an illustrious provenance having previously belonged to Marie Elisabeth Auguste von Sulzbach (1721-1794), wife of the Elector Palatine Karl Theodor (1724-1799),

and possibly Prince Charles Maurice De Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), Bishop of Autun, before coming into the hands of the writer and art collectior William Beckford of Fonthill (1760-1844).  It was donated to the library by John Charrington (1856-1939), Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College Cambridge and Honorary Keeper of the prints at the Fitzwilliam Museum, alongside all other Mitchell’s incunables.

Other late 15^th– or early 16^th-century editions of Savonarola works from the collection of William Mitchell can be found in the Library of Congress of Washington; a copy of Sacro Bosco’s Sphaera mundi, printed at Venice by Johannes Lucilius Santritter and Hieronymus de Sanctis on 31 March 1488, owned by Mitchell and C. W. Dyson Perrins (1864-1958) afterwards, is now in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois (x523 / Sa14s / 1488).

Confirmation of Mitchell’s identification and notice of other incunables from his collection would be gratefully received.

The CUL copy of Domizio Calderini, Commentarii in Juvenalem [Venice : Printer of Domitius Calderinus, 1476-77] (Inc.3.B.3.152[4279]; ISTC ic00035000) is now fully catalogued on line.

The book is inscribed “Antonij Seripandi et amicoru[m]” on leaf  k6 recto, a clear indication of its provenance from the library of Antonio Seripandi (for whom see “A book from Parrhasius’s library” posted on 11 May 2010).

It also bears some notabilia in Seripandi’s hand on leaves d5 verso and d6 recto.

Unlike in the 1477 Plutarch’s Problemata, Seripandi does not states that the book was previously in the library of Aulo Giano Parrasio.  An isolated marginal note on leaf a2 recto in a different cursive hand, apparently earlier than Seripandi’s notabilia, may or may not be by Parrasio.

The book could possibly be identified with number “617.  Calderinus Veronensis” in the 1521 post-mortem inventory of Parrhasius’s library (see Caterina Tristano, “La biblioteca di un umanista calabrese, Aulo Giano Parrasio”, Manziana (Rome), [1988 ?], p. 303).  The question whether the book belonged to Parrasio remains open.

A copy of Eusebius’s Chronicon printed in Venice by Erhardus Ratdolt and dated 13 September 1483 (Inc.4.B.3.23c[1464]; Oates 1755;  ISTC ie00117000) can be securely identified with the copy formerly in the library of Maffeo Pinelli (1736-1785), director of the official Venetian press and book collector.

Pinelli’s copy was described as no. 2494 in Jacopo Morelli, Bibliotheca Maphaei Pinelli Veneti magno jam studio collecta… (Venetiis, Typis Carolii Palesii, 1787), vol. II, p. 34.  Following Pinelli’s death, the book was bought with the rest of his library by the London bookseller James Edwards (1757-1816), to be sold at auction in London.  It was included in the Pinelli sale catalogue of March 1789 as lot 7395, and again in the catalogue of the “Appendix Pinelliana” sale in February 1790, as lot 68.  As surviving copies of the “Appendix Pinelliana” catalogue in the British Library and the Bodleian Library don’t record the name of a buyer, the book was tentatively identified with a copy of the edition held in the Bodleian Library (Auct. K 3.20, for which see Bod-inc, E-040).

Manuscript evidence allows us to identify the Pinelli Eusebius with the exemplar in the Cambridge University Library, instead.  A manuscript

number “2494” in black ink on the upper pastedown matches Morelli’s catalogue number.  An autograph note on the recto of the upper free endpaper records the purchase of the book on 26 February 1790 for £ 2.3.6 by the poet and book collector Michael Wodhull (1740-1816), already known as an active buyer at the Pinelli’s sales.

The book is also identifiable as lot 1050 at Wodhull sale at Sotheby’s, 11-21 January 1886. The British Library copy of the sale catalogue records that the book was purchased for £ 1.1.0 by the London bookseller William Ridler (fl. 1877-1904).  A price code readable as “t/t/” is written in pencil at the centre

of the fore-edge of the upper pastedown, sloping upwards, and a retail price of “£ 2.2.0” in pencil at the centre of the upper pastedown, the codes and their location corresponding to Ridler’s usual practice (for Ridler’s practice and price code as possibly based on the word “taxidermis”, see Peter Kidd’s note at http://www.rsl.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/medieval/buchanan/buchanan.html).

Unfortunately Cambridge University Library holds no record of the arrival of the book, but a purchase from Ridler shortly after the Wodhull sale is a likely possibility.

A copy of the Expositio in Psalmum L (51) “Miserere mei deus” (F150.d.6.5) has been identified as an exemplar of the edition attributed to Johannes Tacuinus de Tridino in Venice around 1500 (ISTC is00214200 and GW M40516), adding this rare edition to the 73 editions of Savonarola’s works held at Cambridge University Library.

The book was purchased for the library at the sale of Jean de Meyer’s collection in Antwerp on 2 November 1869 on suggestion of Henry Bradshaw, the University librarian.  The author of the sale catalogue, Camille Vyt, had identified it as the edition printed by Thierry Martens in Antwerp around 1502 (Catalogue des livres et manuscrits formant la bibliothèque de feu M. Jean de Meyer, Ghent, 2-5 November 1869, p. 27, lot 101/c).  As this attribution was accepted by Bradshaw, the book was classified by the library among the foreign books published after 1500.  It therefore escaped the attention of J.C.T. Oates when he was compiling his catalogue of the library’s incunables.  In the recent Newton catalogue, the book was correctly recognised as a pre-1500 edition but described as a copy of the 1499 Florentine edition by Bartolommeo di Libri, despite its apparent difference from the two other copies of Bartolommeo’s edition held by the library.

In fact, the book can be securely identified as a rare exemplar of Tacuino’s edition:  the number of leaves and the incipits and explicits of the commentary to the psalm and of the Oratio before Communion inItalian (leaf B8 recto) correspond to those described for this edition in GW M40516, the manuscript version of the Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, whose digital images are also available in ISTC.

Tacuino’s edition is known to survive in only five other exemplars in Germany Libraries (Darmstadt, Düsseldorf (2), Giessen, and Köln).  The Cambridge copy is the only one outside Germany. The poor survival rate of the edition (no exemplar is known to survive in Italy), can be explained with the ban, destruction and inclusion in the Index of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum) of all Savonarola’s writings by order of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, who was furious with Savonarola for publicly denouncing his immoral conduct and the corruption of the Roman Curia.