CORRIDA - Bull Fight Album (Corrida de Toros) [cover title]. Havana - Cuba, Spanish Fan Store and Curiosities, M. Carranza, [c. 1890].
Oblong 8vo. Original boards, front cover lettered and ornamented in blue and red, twelve chromolithographic concertina-style folded panels, folding out to 230 cm total length; boards a little spotted and rubbed, lower panel with contemporary inscriptions, a few lithographs with tiny marginal abrasures; a very good copy of an ephemeral publication.
The torero in action shares the facial features with Basque-born José Luis Mazzantini y Eguía (1856-1926), Cuba's most famous and last bull fighter before the US-American invaders outlawed bullfights on the island in 1899. Cuba is the first place in Latin America with documented Spanish-style bullfights; as early as 1514. Mazzantini and Sarah Bernard had a love affair during one of the torero's Cuban tours.
Provenance: Ownership inscription by one Ernesto Hons with the date 1895 on lower panel.
OCLC locates three copies, at Princeton, UCLA and in the Library of Congress.
#2116498