Auction 79
THE VALMADONNA TRUST LIBRARY: FURTHER SELECTIONS FROM THE HISTORIC COLLECTION. * HEBREW PRINTING IN AMERICA. * GRAPHIC & CEREMONIAL ART
By Kestenbaum & Company
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Nov 15, 2018
242 West 30th Street, 12th Floor, New York NY 10001, United States
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Time in New York: 1:00 PM
Time in Israel: 20:00
The auction has ended
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LOT 40:
DE VIDAS, ELIJAH
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Sold for: $2,000
Estimated price :
$
1,500 - $2,000
Buyer's Premium: 25%
sales tax: 8.875%
On commission only
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DE VIDAS, ELIJAH
Reishith Chochmah ["Beginning of Wisdom": ethics].
Second edition. On title, printer's device of three crowns (Yaari, Hebrew Printers' Marks 18). Section headings within engraved vignettes. Last page with Hebrew manuscript in an Italian hand featuring a meditative prayer composed by Nachmanides to be recited for husband and wife prior to sexual relations, along with a related Kabbalistic incantation.
ff. 391, (blank, 31, index). Signatures removed from title, stained in places. Bound in Valmadonna-custom mahogany calf. Thick 4to. Vinograd, Venice 788.
Venice : Giovanni di Gara 1593
Elijah de Vidas (1518–87) was a disciple of R. Moses Cordovero, doyen of the Kabbalists in Safed. Despite its mystical overtones, Reishith Chochmah has become an important classic of ethical/pietistic literature. The work focuses upon the moral aspects of Jewish life, linking the motifs of Aggadic and Mussar literature with that of Kabbalah, thus broadly disseminating mystical ideas.
