First Venetian and first Aldine edition of Vanzi’s important Renaissance legal treatise on procedural nullity, defects in legal process, and the grounds on which judgments could be challenged. Although the work had appeared at Lyon in 1552, this 1554 Venice printing is the first Aldine issue and the first Venetian edition, produced by the heirs of Aldus Manutius.

Octavo, approximately 156 × 94 mm. Roman type, 39 lines plus headline. Collation: †8 A–Z8 AA–KK8 LL10 AAA–FFF8 GGGG4; 334 leaves, including LL10 blank. Title-page with woodcut Aldine device; text with woodcut historiated initials. Nineteenth-century three-quarter vellum over patterned boards, approximately 163 × 102 mm, flat spine with two brown labels and manuscript title on the lower edge.

The copy is complete and unusually rich in signs of use and ownership. It preserves extensive contemporary manuscript marginalia in a practiced legal hand, chiefly in the outer and lower margins, together with a signature on the title-leaf, the printed bookplate of Emilio Pittaluga of Genoa, a Sotheby’s acquisition record associating the copy with C. E. Rappaport of Rome in 1984, and the red “TKB” bookplate of T. Kimball Brooker’s Bibliotheca Brookeriana.

The volume brings together three forms of interest: Aldine printing, Renaissance legal practice, and distinguished modern provenance. As an Aldine legal text, it belongs to the learned scholarly output of the Manutian press, here applied not to classical literature or philology but to the practical and procedural world of sixteenth-century law.

Vanzi’s subject, procedural nullity, was central to early modern legal argument: the defects, irregularities, and formal failures by which a process or judgment could be attacked. The copy’s contemporary annotations give the book particular force. They include legal cross-references, working citations, interpretive glosses, and comparative comments on nullity, procedural defect, jurisdiction, form, substance, and related points of practice.

On the basis of script, ink, and their integration with the printed text, the annotations appear near-contemporary, likely from the mid- to late-sixteenth century. They show the book being read as a professional legal instrument rather than preserved as a merely decorative Aldine. The result is a copy that joins typographic elegance with evidence of practical Renaissance legal use.

The later provenance deepens that narrative. Pittaluga, Rappaport, and Brooker place the volume within a modern collecting history attentive to Italian printing, legal humanism, and Aldine production. Its passage into the Bibliotheca Brookeriana is especially notable, associating the copy with one of the major modern collections of Aldine books.

UCLA 460; Renouard 159/4; EDIT16 27194; USTC 861997.

Early signature on title-leaf; extensive contemporary manuscript marginalia throughout, in a practiced legal hand. Emilio Pittaluga, Genoa, printed bookplate. C. E. Rappaport, Rome, recorded in Sotheby’s acquisition note, 1984. T. Kimball Brooker, Bibliotheca Brookeriana, red “TKB” bookplate.

Complete and sound. Title-leaf lightly worn and mounted on a stub; scattered foxing with a few darker stains; small worm-trail in the lower margins of quires V–Y, not affecting text; spine slightly toned; later endpapers. Binding firm and presentable. The Aldine device and historiated initials remain strong, and the contemporary marginalia add scholarly, historical, and provenance interest without obscuring the printed text.