Ex[emplu]m ex libro seu catastico gastaldi[a]e ordeacij

[Venice: Alvise Schinelli 20 October-12 December, 1525. CONTEMPORARY VENETIAN BLIND-RULED AND GILT RED MOROCCO BY THE ATELIER OF THE AGNESE BINDER (some wear and minor stains), gilt frame of a repeated lyre-shaped arabesque tool, outer corner rosettes and inner corner ivy leaves, blind-ruled central octagon with a gilt knotwork lozenge in the center with a fleur-de-lys above and below, gilt- and blind-ruled spine with split-strap sewing supports (crown and base defective), evidence of eight leather ties, all edges gilt, manuscript docketing A. NO. 39 on the front board and B on the rear.

            Certified transcription of Latin and Italian cadastral documents, notarial acts, privileges, decrees, court judgments and official communications issued by the Paduan and Venetian governments concerning the tax immunity of private Venetian landowners in the district of Oriago (on the Brenta between Venice and Padua).
            In 1405, Venice forcibly annexed Padua and its territories including Oriago, then governed by the Da Carrara. Their lands, and those of their allies, were swiftly confiscated by the Venetian government and sold for cash to noble citizens to be owned, cultivated and developed tax-free in perpetuity. This generated immediate income for the Venetian state and initiated a shift to terra firma investment in the private Venetian economy, previously dominated by overseas trade.
            Over the following hundred twenty years, new and old administrative structures, conflicting judicial rulings and executive and legislative action created a welter of jurisdictional, financial, territorial, and social disputes - in some cases violent.
            To secure his own rights, the Venetian aristocrat Niccolò Maria Corbelli commissioned notary Alvise Schinelli (fl. 1523-50) to identify and certify all relevant documentary evidence of the tax-exempt status of privately owned estates in Oriago - fortified buildings, houses, hospitals, churches, farms, mills, fields, lawns, woodlands, orchards, marshes, and fishing reservoirs. This produced copies of forty documents and cadastral records in Latin and Italian, which Schinelli arranged chronologically then personally signed and subscribed between October and December 1525, as did two other notaries. The attested data confirmed the privilege of all the Corbelli properties in Oriago. Two additions to the original text, penned in 1636 and 1709, corroborate the continued tax immunity of those Corbelli holdings that passed to the extensive Moro family.
           In good condition (one medial blank leaf excised), docketing note of 23 January 1710 on the first recto, modern pencil ownership note of Luschin.
¶Knapton, "Land and Economic Policy in Later Fifteenth-Century Padua" in Venice and the Veneto during the Renaissance: The Legacy of Benjamin Kohl edd. Knapton et al. (2014) 197-257; Pedani, "Villa Moro a Oriago di Mira" in Rive: uomini, arte, natura 9 (2013) 35-41; see Knapton's "I rapporti fiscali tra Venezia e la Terraferma: il caso padovano nel secondo '400" in Archivio Veneto Serie V CXVII (1981) 5-65.
¶For the attribution to the Agnese Binder: see Nuvoloni's "Commissioni Dogali. Venetian Bookbindings in the British Library" in For the Love of the Binding. Studies...Presented to Mirjam Foot ed. Pearson (2000) 85, 91 & figg. 1 & 10-11 & tools no. 9, 30, 43, 64 & 67A and Hobson's Renaissance Book Collecting figg. 81-2.