From the library of a sixteenth century statesman

(Scepper, Cornelius Duplicius). Rerum à Carolo V. Caesare Augusto in Africa bello gestarum commentarii, elegantißimis iconibus ad historiam accommodis illustrati.

€ 6,500.00

Re-issue of the first edition, published the previous year. This documentation of the North African expeditions of Charles V against Tunis and the Arabian Coast was compiled by the Imperial envoy Scepper (d. 1554) from eyewitness accounts by Nicolas de Villegaignon and Juan Cristobal Calvete de Estrelle, augmented by extracts from Giovio and others. The remarkable views of sieges show the environs of Tunis as well as Algiers and El Kef (Aphrodisium).

Bound at the beginning of the volume is the first edition of Bruto's first work, a polished prose encomium for Charles V, dedicated to his son, King Philip II of Spain. Giovanni Bruto (1515-94), a banished Italian scholar, spent a large part of his life travelling and served as court historian to Emperors Rudolph II and Maximilian II.

A very clean, practically spotless copy. Title page of Bruto stamped; final flyleaf replaced by five modern blank leaves. With fine, contemporary acquisition note by the Austrian statesman and military commander Count Georg von Helfenstein-Gundelfingen (1518-73) on the pastedown, dated London, 1559 ("Emptus Lundini Angliae Metropol."), from the time of his diplomatic mission in Great Britain. "In 1558 Helfenstein was Imperial Governor of Upper Austria, in 1559 Prefect of the Imperial Court. At this time he was sent to England by Emperor Ferdinand to pursue a marriage between Ferdinand's third son, Archduke Charles, with Queen Elizabeth" (cf. ADB XI, 687). Later in the Fürstenberg Library in Donaueschingen.