Putting the books back on the shelf The case of the signature “Plúteo” from the Library of the Duque de Osuna

Abstract

The current bibliographic control of the original collection of the Library of the Duque de Osuna is very uneven. After its purchase by the Spanish Government in 1884, it was shared out in many different locations, so the provenance marks became the only way to recognize its origin. Specifically, one of them is the so-called “Plúteo” signature that appears in a multitude of copies and has a very idiosyncratic spelling, placement and composition: “Plut. II Lit. M Nº 18”. After a review of the works published so far on these provenance marks and the harvest of the most possible number of examples of this signature, our goal is to provide conclusions resulting from this analysis in order to identify and locate copies from Osuna, contributing the ambitious aspiration of the reconstruction of this noble library.