Bidspirit auction | MANUSCRITO. VICTORIA (Anrique Ayres); [anónimo

MANUSCRITO. VICTORIA (Anrique Ayres); [anónimo quinhentista]. TRAGEDIA da Vingança que Foy Feita Sobre a Morte del Rey Agamenon - BREVE SUMMARIO dos Reys de Portugal. 1841, 24 de Junho. - VICTORIA (Anrique Ayres); [anonymous sixteenth-century author]. Tragedia da vingança que foy feita sobre a morte del Rey Agamenon. Agora novamente tirada de Grego em lingoagem: trovada por Anrique Ayres victoria. Cujo argumento he de Sophocles poeta grego. Agora segunda vez impressa e emendada e anhadida pello mesmo Autor. – Breue Summario dos Reys de Portvgal, desdo prymeiro rey dom Affonso Anriques atee el rey dom Ioam ho terceyro nosso senhor que hora reyna. Foy tirado das chronicas do Reyno. [S.l.], 24 June 1841. Manuscript on paper, nineteenth-century copy of sixteenth-century editions; 1 vol.: [1] leaf with note identifying the copyist, [20] leaves for Tragedia… , [1] blank leaf, [8] leaves for Summario… , 20 blank leaves. Nineteenth-century mottled sheep binding, spine with raised bands and gilt tooling. Volume bringing together two complete transcriptions: Tragédia da vingança que foy feita sobre a morte del Rey Agamenon , by Anrique Ayres Victoria, a verse adaptation of Sophocles’ Electra , whose original known edition is a quarto of 24 leaves, printed in Lisbon by Germão Galharde in 1555, with a woodcut title-page and without pagination. The copyist reproduces not only the text but also the ornamental frame, title and colophon of the sixteenth-century edition, including the statement: “Acabouse aos VI dias de Novembro de mil e quinhentos e cincoenta e cinco anos”. Breue Summario dos Reys de Portvgal , an anonymous compendium of the history of the Portuguese kings from D. Afonso Henriques to D. João III, whose original edition is a quarto of eight leaves (16 pages), in gothic type, without place or printer, dated only “M.D.L.V.” and with a woodcut architectural title-page. Here too the copy follows the printed model closely, with a pen-and-ink reconstruction of the architectural frame of the title-page. On the recto of the first leaf of the manuscript appears a note in contemporary handwriting: “Em quinta feira, dia de S. João de 1841, fiz esta copia à vista do original, e a conferi com o meu amigo o Senhor F. A. de Varnhagen.” The date given corresponds to 24 June 1841, which did indeed fall on a Thursday (the feast of St John the Baptist). The wording suggests that the copy was made by an unidentified hand and collated with the historian Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen (1816–1878), already engaged at that time in the study of historical sources in Portuguese archives. From a bibliographical point of view, this manuscript predates by several decades any known typographical reprint of these works. The present manuscript copy of 1841 thus represents a very early witness to the nineteenth-century rediscovery of these rare sixteenth-century Portuguese editions, most probably produced in an erudite, archival working context. Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Visconde de Porto Seguro (São João de Ipanema, Sorocaba, 17-II-1816 – Vienna, 26-VI-1878), was a soldier, diplomat and one of the principal renovators of nineteenth-century Luso-Brazilian historiography. Trained in military engineering and diplomacy in Lisbon, he fought in the Liberal Wars, worked extensively in Portuguese and Spanish archives and pursued a diplomatic career in the service of the Empire of Brazil. His História Geral do Brasil (1854–1857) is regarded as a foundational work of Brazilian historiography, earning him the epithet “father of the history of Brazil” and the position of patron of chair 39 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.