Lot 1076 , Doctoral Diploma of the University of Padua, 14 January 1621.

° Doctoral Diploma of the University of Padua, 14 January 1621. Degree conferring a doctorate in both laws on Carlo Estrana, issued by Paolo Gualdo, vicar-general of Marco Cornaro, bishop of Padua.
In Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment 6 folios, preceded and followed by single paper flyleaves (with watermark IC and lamb and flag), complete in one gathering (i6), written in an Italian cursive italic script on 20 long lines, pages ruled with double framing lines in purple; many letters in majuscule in liquid gold, text pages framed with full foliate and floral borders in dark blue, light blue, red and yellow; illuminated frontispiece with full border, roundels in baroque frames depicting the Virgin and Child (upper margin), St Francis receiving the stigmata (left margin) an unidentified religious with halo [St Anthony of Padua?] (right margin) and the arms of the grantee, quarterly azure and or (top margin), all supported by two sea-creatures, having floral and foliate motifs issuing from their mouths; central cartouche with the beginning of the text of the diploma, incorporating an initial V (for Vniversis) in liquid gold; list of witnesses; signed by Paolo Gualdo and Paolo Salamono, notary and chancellor; given at the episcopal palace at Padua, Thursday 14 January 1621 (new style).
> Bound in contemporary Italian red morocco binding, lavishly gilt in the fanfare style, covers with small tooled borders, straight and curved fillets forming compartments of various small tools including floral and foliate motifs, volutes, cherubs in the form of caryatids, perched eagles and mounted figures; traces of silk ties, seals [of the Bishop of Padua] now wanting; binding likely made in Veneto (compare Doctoral degree of the University of Padua, earlier in 1576 [London, BL, Davis 872] and similar 17th-century degrees [Universities of Pavia and Pisa] in the Michel Wittock Collection, Christie’s, 7 July 2004, lot. 101). Dimensions of parchment leaves 229 x 168 mm.; dimensions overall 240 x 175 mm.

Paolo Gualdo (1553-1621).
Son of Giuseppe Gualdo, he was born in Vicenza on July 25, 1553, studied law in Padua and graduated there in utroque iure [in both kinds of law] on May 10, 1581. From November 29, 1579 he had become a man of the cloth, and in 1585 was ordained a priest in Vicenza and shortly afterwards was made a canon. But he had already gone to Rome in 1582, highly recommended by Cardinal Castagna who, being made Pope Urban VII, called him to manage the office of Secretary of Petitions. At the Pope’s death he returned to Vicenza and, having given up his canonship in 1591, established himself in Padua, however making frequent trips to Rome, where he sojourned for long periods. In 1596 he was called by the Bishop of Padua, Marco Cornaro, to be elected as his Vicar General and, on November 12, 1609, as head priest of the Cathedral. He wrote a biography of Giovanni Vincenzio Pinelli, who had been his close friend and with whose Neapolitan relatives he had maintained close ties. We also know that he had ‘a great knack for composing verses in the rustic Paduan dialect’. He died in Padua on October 16, 1621.

There appears to be no comprehensive study of the illuminated diplomas produced for the alumni of the University of Padua, of which this survives as a fine example. These illuminated diplomas show how the art of illuminating enjoyed an unbroken evolution from the later Middle Ages through modern times at the second oldest Italian university.

Founded in 1223, the University of Padua is one of the oldest European universities and the second oldest in Italy. It originally taught jurisprudence and theology, but in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it became known as well for medicine and astronomy. Among its famous students are the English physician William Harvey, and the scientist Galileo, who held a chair in Physics there from 1592. In the seventeenth century, the first woman graduate in the world received her degree in philosophy at the University of Padua.

GORRINGE’S are grateful to Christopher Whittick for cataloguing this lot.
£3,000-5,000