Becoming collectable: collecting and selling Aldines in early-modern Venice

One of the book collector’s major rules is the purchase of unique copies, be it by the exemplar’s rareness, typographical perfection or rare error occurring during the type-setting process, the binding or illustrious previous owners. Like the incunabula, an autonomous collection sector begun in 1639 with Bernard von Mallinckrodt’s publication: De ortu et progressu artis typographicae, Aldine books have become with time a category by itself due to the edition-specific features of the books. While we can trace some interest for Aldine copies already as early as the first half of the 16th century, it is usually inventories as well as the sale catalogues’ registration of the books and the fixed starting prices which tell us when editions become collectibles and why. The paper proposes to trace, with the help of inventories and sale catalogues from Venice but also others from Italy, France and England, the birth of a collectible - the Aldine editions - and enquire about the nature of their classification in different contexts. It will set to describe the shift from a 16th-17th centuries interest in contents and typographical craftsmanship of the edition to an appreciation of the rareness and uniqueness of the copy, occurring in the 18th century. It will moreover address the 19th century rise of an extensive Aldine market due to the secularization of monastic libraries and the accumulation of duplicates in deposits and hosting libraries.