{"title":"Illustrated Books","description":"\u003cp\u003eBooks with drawings, art, illustrations, woodcuts, or diagrams.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"du-fouilloux-jacques","title":"DU FOUILLOUX, Jacques","description":"\u003cp\u003eExcellent, charmingly illustrated, first and only edition of Cesare Parona s translation into Italian of Du Fouilloux s famous and seminal text on hunting, and the first and only early edition in Italian. illustrated with forty charming and vigorously drawn woodcuts that often use blocks of black to great effect. The work is translated from the Paris edition of 1606 and is dedicated to Ercole Visconti. Du Fouilloux (1521-1580) was a very keen, knowledgeable and experienced hunter and his work created a considerable stir amongst the many enthusiastic hunters of the C16; it was the earliest scientific treatment of the subject in modern times and undoubtedly one of the best. The work deals on hunting in general and particularly that of the deer, hare, wild boar and wolf. It also deals with the management of the hunt and hounds, hound welfare and ailments, training, breeding and types and the habits of all their various quarries. The last chapter deals specifically with the welfare of dogs and gives twenty seven  recipes  for curing ailments ranging from rabies to snake bite. It swiftly became a standard work and editions in various languages were still being published into the mid 19th century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DU FOUILLOUX, Jacques","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816066621775,"sku":"L1105","price":4500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0742.jpg?v=1781795330"},{"product_id":"porcacchi-thomaso","title":"PORCACCHI, Thomaso","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of the most celebrated book of islands, by the Italian scholar Thomaso Porcacchi, beautifully illustrated with the delicate engraved maps and plans, one for each place, of Girolamo Porro, who also produced the maps for Ruscelli's translation of Ptolemy's Geographia in 1574. The first 15 illustrations begin with Venice and her surrounds, then pass from east to west through the Mediterranean, from Corfu, Crete and Cyprus via Rhodes, Sicily and Malta, to Corsica, Elba and the Balearics. The next six are from Northern Europe, the British Isles, Scotland, Ireland, the Frisian islands, Iceland and Gotland. Across the Atlantic are Hispanola, (with a lengthy account of the arrival of Columbus), Cuba and St Lawrence, the islands ending with Ceylon and the Moluccas. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The last four illustrations comprise a remarkably important and detailed map of North America, a smaller version of Forlani's, and the first depicting that landmass as a single continental entity; it is also the first printing of the first atlas map of North America, followed by a detailed plan of Mexico city at the time of the Spanish conquest. The last two are very attractive and complete world maps, the second specifically designed for the use of navigators. Each of the illustrations is accompanied by a few pages of topographical and geographical description of the subject matter, including principal places, physical features, climate, customs and produce. The Isole is interesting both as a fine example of the most elegant Italian cartography but also as one of the most sophisticated responses to the increasing demand for reliable information about far away places. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Albert Parre√±o was an alumnus of Princeton and a well-known collector of travel books.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PORCACCHI, Thomaso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816067998031,"sku":"L993","price":9500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00031.jpg?v=1781795327"},{"product_id":"reisch-gregorius","title":"REISCH, Gregorius","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of Gallucci s translation of Gregorius Reich s celebrated and beautifully illustrated encyclopedia with additional material in this edition by Gallucci and including the revisions by the mathematician Oronce Fine from 1535, and some of the additions of the 1512 Strasbourg edition, such as Martin Waldseemüller's treatises on architecture and perspective, and Masha'allah's composition of the astrolabe. The Margarita philosophica (the Philosophic pearl) is a beautifully illustrated encyclopedia which was widely used as a university textbook in the early sixteenth century, particularly in Germany; it takes the form of a dialogue between master and pupil - the pupil asks elementary questions and the master answers them in depth. It gives us an intriguing insight into the university curriculum and state of learning and scientific knowledge at the start of the C16th and here in a much revised form in the late C16th. Its author, Gregor Reisch (c.1467-1525), a Carthusian monk and a friend of many of the most celebrated Humanists of his era including, Erasmus, Beatus and Rheananus, was prior of the Charterhouse of St John the Baptist near Freiburg-im-Breisgau from 1503 to 1525 and was confessor and counsellor to the Emperor Maximilian I. He was educated at the University of Freiburg where he received the degree of magister in 1489 and also taught there. The Margarita was conceived as a textbook for his students at Freiburg, among whom were many influential figures of the German Renaissance, notably the theologian Johann Eck. Reisch's text is divided into twelve chapters. The traditional subjects of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) each have a chapter devoted to them. Four of the five remaining chapters are concerned with natural philosophy and cover such things as the elements, meteorology, alchemy, the plant and animal kingdoms, optics and memory as well as heaven, hell and purgatory. The final chapter concerns moral philosophy. The additions in this edition are added at the end, a further 300 odd pages, each supplementing a chapter of the main work. The usefulness of the book as an educational tool is much enhanced by a detailed index and the liberal use of marvelous woodcut illustrations. There are two issues of this edition, with apparently no priority, one with Barezzi's imprint, and another with Somascho's which is more common institutionally. A very good copy of this wonderful and beautifully illustrated educational encyclopedia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"REISCH, Gregorius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816068096335,"sku":"L1138","price":7250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1138-1.jpg?v=1781795327"},{"product_id":"vergilius-maro-publius","title":"VERGILIUS MARO, Publius","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first collected edition of the works of Vergil in French, in the verse translation of Guillaume Michel de Tours for the Eclogues and Georgics and Octovien de Saint-Gelais for the Aeneid. The individual titles had been published in separate editions, all three of which are exceptionally rare; 'Les Eneydes' by Octovien de Saint-Gelais in 1509, 'Les Bucoliques' in 1516 and 'Les Georgicques' 1519 both by Guillaume Michel. This collection of the works was republished in 1532 and 1540. Both the translators were poets of some note, both Rhetoriqueurs, the name generally given to the group of poets active from approximately 1450 to 1530, between Villon and Clement Marot (including Chastellain, Meschonot, Molinet, Gringore, Cr étin, Jean Lemaire de Belges, Jean Marot, and Jean Bouchet, who was still writing in 1550). St.-Gelais and Michel shared an intense preoccupation with rhetoric; it was as 'l'art de seconde rh étorique' that they classified poetry. Both were prolific and extremely influential translators of classical texts. Octovien de Saint-Gelais had considerable, knowledge of the literature of antiquity, and an eagerness to display it, sometimes leading to an excessive use of Latinisms in pursuit of a high style. His work in general concentrates on purely formal devices, such as elaborate rhyme schemes (rimes l éonines, couronn ées, encha√Æn ées,  équivoqu ées), alliteration, puns, rebus, and other types of puzzles. All this is sometimes (inevitably) at the expense of clarity. The Rhetoriqueurs influence on Renaissance poetry, with all its formal experimentation, was considerable. Rabelais too, with his love of puns and lists, can be seen as a direct heir. There had been an earlier anonymous translation of The Aeneid published before Saint Gelais' but it was really a reworking of the text rather than a translation. \"Influenced by the philological impulse of the earlier Humanists, sixteenth-century translators are almost universally concerned to demonstrate the fidelity and accuracy of their versions. The prose 'remaniement' of Vergil, close to a romance, which appeared anonymously in 1483 was challenged in 1509 by the posthumous publication of Octavien de Saint-Gelais' verse translation composed with the intention 'to translate this book from its lofty distinguished Latin word-for-word and as closely as possible'.\" The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. The works of Vergil had been published numerous times in France but no edition was more influential on French Renaissance literature than this poetical translation that brought Vergil's work to a much wider audience. It was unequalled until Clement Marot's version was published in 1577.  Most, if not all, of the woodcuts used in this volume are incunable blocks from V érard's general stock, giving the work immense visual charm. The large and fine woodcut depicting an author at his desk that accompanies the prologue to the Aeneid had also been used by Couteau in 'La l égende des Flamens' in 1522. The present work is very rare, Renouard cites thirteen copies in public libraries worldwide (mostly in provincial France) but we have been able to locate far fewer and no copies at auction in the last thirty years. An important, rare and extremely influential work from the exceptional library of the Earls of Macclesfield.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"VERGILIUS MARO, Publius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816068325711,"sku":"L871","price":14500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_00112.jpg?v=1781795325"},{"product_id":"laet-johannes-de-with-abelin-johann-philippx-cootwijk-johannes-van-drechsler-wolfgang-farghani-sionita-gabriel-hesronita-johannes","title":"LAET, Johannes de [with] [ABELIN, Johann Philippx, COOTWIJK, Johannes van, DRECHSLER, Wolfgang, FARGHANI, SIONITA, Gabriel, HESRONITA, Johannes]","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst editions of these two interesting works on Persia and Arabia, designed for of investors interested in the opportunities afforded by the trade opening up in the New World and the East, especially clients of the relatively new Dutch West and East India companies. De Laet (best known for his History of the New World), was a founding director of the Dutch West India Company, and remained a director until his death. He dedicated the first work to the English antiquary William Boswell, having spent some time in London, to learn the trade of a merchant; he corresponded regularly with William Camden, Sir Henry Spelman, Sir Simonds D Ewes and other English scholars. His work is divided into two parts, the first gives a general description of the region, including eight charming and accurate full page woodcuts of Persians in costume, probably inspired by earlier works such as Nicolay s on the Turks. The second part gives short and important accounts of various travels into into the east, some taken from Ramusio, including the journeys of several Englishmen such as Cartwright, Joseph Salbank and Robert Covert, Richard Steele, and John Newberry. \"Cet ouvrage, dit Boucher de la Richardie, est plus recherch é pour les relations que J. de Laet a jointes √† sa description de la Perse, que pour sa description m√™me, qui est très-superficielle. . Les  écrits g éographiques de Laet sont r édig és avec beaucoup de soin et d'exactitude; ils ont encore de int éret aujourd'hui, parce qu'ils servent √† faire connaitre les changements survenus depuis dans divers pays de l'Europe.\" Schwab. The second work is an interesting compilation of descriptions of the habits and customs of Arabic countries, Islamic and Arabic history, topography and laws, including an account of the travels to Jerusalem and Syria by Johannes Cootwijk, and an appendix on the Muslim calendar. It includes the description of numerous Arab cities such as Baghdad, Bokhara, Damascus, Medina, Mecca, Aleppo, etc. and also contains; Gabriel Sionita, \"De nonnullis orientalium urbibus, nec non indigenarum religione ac moribus, tractatus brevis\" (pp. 3-90); Christophe Richer, \"De moribus atque institutis turcarum, arabum, aliarumque, quae Mahumedem sequuntur, gentium\" (pp. 91-112); Johannis Cotovici, \"Itinerario hierosolymitano et syriaco, de sacris, ritibus, moribus et institutis mahometaeorum\" (pp. 113-228); Johann Ludwig Gottfried, \"Excerpta ex Lodovici Godofredi archontologia cosmica\" (pp. 229-242); \"Arabiae topographia et alia, ex Adriani Romani theatro urbium\" (pp. 243-257); Wolfgang Drechsler, \"Historia arabum\" (pp. 258-297). Printed by Janssonius in almost exactly the same style as the first, it was undoubtedly meant to complement it though, strangely, they are rarely found together. Very good copies of these two important first editions.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"LAET, Johannes de [with] [ABELIN, Johann Philippx, COOTWIJK, Johannes van, DRECHSLER, Wolfgang, FARGHANI, SIONITA, Gabriel, HESRONITA, Johannes]","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816072618319,"sku":"L1322","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage2_87f3e6b5-9fbe-43cd-83f8-a7d57ddb8c55.png?v=1781795324"},{"product_id":"bochius-joannes","title":"BOCHIUS, Joannes","description":"\u003cp\u003eFIRST AND ONLY EDITION of this magnificent festival book celebrating the entry of Archduke Ernst of Austria into Antwerp on 14 June 1594. The condition and detailing of the engravings indicates this must have been one of the earliest copies off the press. They were executed by Pieter van Der Borcht after drawings by Cornelius Floris II and Joos de Momper from the designs of Martin de Vos. The first double-page engraving depicts Ernst's parade approaching the city, images of the city entrance, the columns, stages, and arches erected in the town in honour of the occasion, the city theatre, and a two-page musical score for 6 voices of the song performed to welcome the Archduke. The pageantry continues with an engraving of the 27-foot statue erected in the marketplace of the giant Antigonus who once controlled Antwerp and was known for cutting off the right hands of mariners who did not pay him tribute. The city was liberated by another giant, Brabo, who cut off Antigonus' own hand - the legendary origin of the hands on the city's heraldic arms. The festivities end with nautical displays, fireworks and jousting, each frozen in time by their own splendid double-page engravings. Each is accompanied by descriptions of the festivities, and a commentary on their allegorical significance, by Joannes Bochius (1555-1609), a prominent lawyer and poet from Brussels who was an active official in the local government. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The work provides a vivid depiction of the pageantry of the age and, the exuberant showmanship of a hopeful city: Antwerp had suffered sack, siege and plunder at the hands of Spaniards and Italians throughout the 1570s and 80s, its population halved to 55,000 by 1589. \"What is unmistakable, once the real plight of the city is realized, is the extent to which the various spectacles prepared for 1594 convey the city's desire to put a brave front on its position, asserting, particularly, through the allegories on the arches of the foreign merchant communities, that the golden age which the city had enjoyed under Charles V was not lost beyond recall...\" Whether or not Ernst, a minor member of the Hapsburg family could deliver the town remains to be seen: \"His relative unimportance is emphasized by the fact that Ernst was never invested with the titles of Margrave of Antwerp or Duke of Brabant\" and thus was not entitled to the full ceremonial welcome. (Davidson and Van der Weel, cit. infr.). To add to the misfortune, Ernst died in Brussels 8 months later in February 1595, so the work ends with a funeral oration, a memorial as well as a tribute.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOCHIUS, Joannes","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816076124495,"sku":"L1502","price":11500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_6829.jpg?v=1781795324"},{"product_id":"danti-egnatio","title":"DANTI, Egnatio","description":"First edition of Egnatio Danti s translation of Proclus   Sfera  and his companion treatise on the use of the sphere, and second edition of Piccolomini s treatise on the proportions respectively of water and dry land of the Earth. According to Graesse there was a 1540 edition of the latter, but from Ziletti s dedication a Venetian senator, it is clear that the book was first published in 1558. Houzeau \u0026amp; Lancaster lists a  very rare  1571 first edition of Danti s translation and treatise, but it is probably confusing the latter with Danti s commentary upon the translation of Sacrobosco s  Tractatus de Spaera  made by his grandfather Pier Vincenzo Rainaldi (called  Dante  after the author of the  Divine Comedy ) and first published in 1571. Egnatio Danti (1536-86), referred to as  Cosmographer of the Grand Duke of Tuscany  on these title-pages, was an outstanding scientist who taught at Pisa and Bologna, drew maps for Cosimo de  Medici, designed a number of astronomical instruments (two of which were set up in Santa Maria Novella, Florence), brought about the reformation of the Gregorian calendar after having detected a 11-day error, wrote the first book to be published in Italy on the astrolabe (1569), and was appointed Papal Cosmographer and Mathematician by Gregory XIII (1580). His translation of Proclus   Sfera , dedicated to Isabella de  Medici, opens with a two-page life of Proclus and contains long and detailed annotations, often flanked by diagrams, for each of the fifteen chapters of the book. It ends with a five-page essay on how to study the stars without using scientific instruments. Proclus (412-485), illustrious Neo-Platonic philosopher from Constantinople, was also a fine astronomer who expounded the division of the celestial sphere with modern accuracy. Danti s treatise on the use of the sphere is divided into thirty short chapters dealing with, i.a., how to make a sphere, determine the various positions of the sun and stars and the corresponding times of day and night, and study the Zodiac.\r The proportions of water and dry land was a much debated topic of the time. Like Aristotle, Leonardo was convinced that the quantity of water exceeded that of the land, and that a great quantity of water was collected in caverns underneath the surface of the Earth. Piccolomini was one of the first scientists to maintain the opposite. In his fifteen-chapter essay he provides detailed explanations of why, from the antiquity, the amount of water on the Earth had been thought to exceed that of the land, followed by the exposition of his own revolutionary theory. Alessandro Piccolomini (1508-1578), a typical Renaissance polymath, wrote poems along with scientific, philosophical and legal works. An important scientific collection in a very attractive contemporary Spanish binding - a charming example of 'encuadernaci√≥n plateresca', most widespread in university town in the C16. Both the Danti and the Piccolomini are also of interest as early Americana.","brand":"DANTI, Egnatio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816078287183,"sku":"L48","price":7500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L48-8.jpg?v=1781795322"},{"product_id":"five-historiated-initials","title":"FIVE HISTORIATED INITIALS","description":"\u003cp\u003e(Framed all together; on the reverses remains of text and 4-line red staves; slight rubbing in a couple of places, else in very good condition). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n FINE INITIALS FROM A LAVISHLY ILLUSTRATED GRADUAL OF THE BEGINNING OF THE 16TH CENTURY: AN EXCEPTIONALLY RICH PROJECT OF DECORATION. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n According to the textual and musical fragments on the reverse of a couple of our cuttings, the five capitals come from a Gradual. Indeed, the K probably opened the Kyrie eleison (since there are remains of the Gloria on the reverse of the letter); the Q marked the Communion for Corpus Christi. The iconography also contributes to the identification. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The sophisticate acanthus staves are typical of early sixteenth century German initials in both illuminated and printed books. The illuminator of our initials, however, was aware of the rules and the power of the Renaissance painting, known in Germany through the masterpieces of Dürer, Cranach and Altdorfer. The atmospheric landscapes characterised by distant silver-blue shapes of mountains, the effect of the movement in the water, the smooth brush, the attention paid to details such as the subtle termination of the stave curled around Christ's tiny foot or the costumes in the Communion scene (the woman's one indicating a date around 1520) make this artist and accomplished painter of the early Renaissance. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The Gradual from which our initials came seems to have been lavishly adorned with historiated initials, not just for the introits. This rich project was exceptional and certainly reserved for very important books.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FIVE HISTORIATED INITIALS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816078614863,"sku":"L832","price":7750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_7967_5bcc7b0b-4741-46b1-bb5f-9cb9a047b554.jpg?v=1781795321"},{"product_id":"pistofilo-bonaventura","title":"PISTOFILO, Bonaventura","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of this work on the use of pike, halberd and musket with 53 very precise and beautiful engravings, somewhat like Callot's in style and fineness. 34 plates are dedicated to the pike, 4 to the halberd and 15 to the musket. they seemed to have been engraved by Bertelli (Francesco(?)), who worked at Padua between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries (Benezit). The text explains the history and use of each of these weapons and the particular action or manoeuvre depicted in each plate. Each of the figures illustrated is numbered, corresponding to a numbered paragraph of the explanatory text, making the manual of very practical application. \u003cbr\u003e\n Bonaventura Pistofilo from Pontremoli was a notary for the Este family, then chancellor to Duke Alfonso I d Este, and a close friend of Ariosto. This work was dedicated to Sir Kenelm George Digby with his striking youthful portrait, probably done during his three years in Europe between 1620 and 1623. Digby (1603-1665) was an English author, diplomat, naval commander and one of the most fashionable figures of his day. He was known for his esoteric approach to science and advocacy of the  powder of sympathy , a  healing  powder of vitriol applied to a bandage taken from the wound which healed without any contact with the patient. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Ferdinando Palasciano (1815 - 1891) was an Italian physician and politician. He argued that any wounded or sick soldier was neutral on the battlefield and should be helped by any available doctor. Palasciano's speech at the International Congress at the Accademia Pontoniana of Naples (1861), had widespread influence and was the basis of the First Geneva Convention which founded the Red Cross (1864).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PISTOFILO, Bonaventura","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816085594447,"sku":"L1503","price":7950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_5351.jpg?v=1781795318"},{"product_id":"boodt-anselmus","title":"BOODT, Anselmus","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond corrected and improved edition (including new illustration) by Adrianus Toll, of this important work on gemstones and minerals, first published in 1609, the definitive work of the Belgian mineralogist, alchemist and physician, Anselmus Boodt. \"In his Gemmarum et Lapidum Historia, Boodt made the first attempt at a systematic description of minerals, dividing the minerals into great and small, rare and common, hard and soft, combustible and incombustible, transparent and opaque. He uses a scale of hardness expressed in three degrees and notes the crystalline forms of some minerals (triangular, quadratic, and hexangular). Boodt criticizes some of the views of Aristotle, Pliny, Paracelsus, and others. He also mentions atoms. He enumerates about 600 minerals that he knows from personal observation, and describes their properties, values, imitations, and medical applications. There are also tables of values of diamonds according to their size and a short description of the polishing of precious stones. Boodt cites nineteen authors and, besides the minerals known to him, gives a list of 233 minerals whose names he knows from Pliny and Bartholomeus Anglicus, among others.\" D.S.B., II, p. 293. From 1583 Boodt lived Bohemia as physician to Wilhelm Rosenberg, the burgrave of Prague. In 1584 he was nominated physician in ordinary to Rudolf II (with a considerable salary) and retained this position until 1612. There is no evidence however that he ever seriously practiced as a physician; Rudolf clearly saw him as one of his alchemists. Boodt was placed in charge of Rudolf's collection of gems in his  Kunstkammer . The  Naturalia  (minerals and gemstones) were in a 37 cabinet display with the gems and minerals systematically arranged, the large uncut gemstones held in strong boxes. De Boodt was an avid mineral collector and travelled widely on collecting trips to the mining regions of Germany, Bohemia and Silesia, often accompanied by his Bohemian naturalist friend, Thaddaeus Hagecius. This work also gives us our most important source of knowledge of Renaissance gem cutting, the carving of precious stones, the making of jewelry, forgery and trade of precious stones.  De Boodt assembled virtually all of the knowledge then extant  by far the most thorough and complete up to date  [his work] is further distinguished by its intimate knowledge of the art of the lapidary and must therefore be regarded as the first treatise to offer more than the briefest views of gem cutting  Sinkankas. The woodcuts include illustrations of corals, geodes, fossils, gems, minerals, along with tools and methods of working them. A very good copy of this seminal work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOODT, Anselmus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816105189711,"sku":"L1023b","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1023B_6.png?v=1781795311"},{"product_id":"nolpe-pieter","title":"NOLPE, Pieter","description":"\u003cp\u003eMagnificent fête book attributed to Samuel Coster commemorating the 1642 entry into Amsterdam of Henrietta Maria, superbly illustrated with a series of allegorical engravings celebrating her visit, and a wonderful large engraved view of Amsterdam (quite commonly missing). Henrietta Maria 1609-1669, (Queen Consort of Charles I) arrived in Holland after a stormy crossing in March 1642. Ostensibly her journey was to convey her daughter Princess Mary to her future husband William II Prince of Orange, but she also used the occasion to try to obtain military and financial assistance for the King. She received a less than enthusiastic welcome, since she was both Catholic and a queen, and the Protestant republic was reluctant to help. The Prince of Orange was apprehensive about assisting her for fear of jeopardizing his own position with the States hoping to maintain good relations with both sides. Despite this, the City of Amsterdam agreed to receive the royal guests. For the occasion of her arrival ‘tableau vivants’ of Arion and the Dolphin and Perseus and Andromeda were planned in the Damrak (then still a canal), but were never actually performed. These scenes or fêtes, represented in allegorical engravings by Nolpe, had strong political overtones. “In Dutch literature, the subject of Andromeda stands for the threatened country – the Netherlands – and Perseus for the noble hero who liberates it from tyranny. … in 1642 a tableau vivant (in the waters of the Rokin) was planned for the joyous entry of Henrietta Maria in Amsterdam, with Perseus symbolizing Frederick Henry.” Jan Suijter. Again the figure of Arion rescued by the dolphin in the next plate symbolized the Netherlands saved by William of Orange. The other four scenes represented: ‘The marriage of Peleus and Thetis’ (a prefiguration of the Marriage of William II and Mary Stuart); ‘The Treaty of Adolf van Nassau’; ‘The Marriage of Reinout II of Egmond and Eleonora Plantagenet’ and ‘The Marriage of James II of Scotland and Maria van Egmond’. All were subjects chosen to allude to the importance of the Orange family in the well-being of the Dutch Republic, and to stress the connection between the Stuarts and the House of Orange. The series is very finely engraved by Nolpe after oil sketches by the celebrated artist Peter Potter, one of which survives, in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. The other engravings show the stages or triumphal arches designed for the fêtes. The last engraving is a very finely engraved large sea view of Amsterdam showing the salut given by the fleet in welcome of Henrietta Maria. This view is particularly rare. A large copy, with all the plates retaining their full margins, of a rare work, especially complete.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eSarah Sophia Banks was an English collector of antiquities and sister to the celebrated naturalist Joseph Banks. Her important collection of theatrical ephemera containing playbills, broadsides, notices and press-cuttings dealing with private theatrical performances, dating from 1750 to 1808, was presented to the British Museum Library on her death in 1818.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NOLPE, Pieter","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816117150031,"sku":"L1021","price":8500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0009_fb4ec4ce-3317-4c79-8dd9-3171adba59d0.jpg?v=1781795305"},{"product_id":"puget-de-la-serre-jean","title":"PUGET DE LA SERRE, Jean","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of La Serre's description of the famous visit of Marie de Medici to the Dutch Republic in 1638, beautifully illustrated with portraits by W. Hollar and with exceptionally fine etched views of the entr ée of the French Queen Mother into various Dutch cities, bound with the extremely rare continuation of her voyage to England, also superbly illustrated with portraits and views. Landwehr and Fairfax Murray ascribe all the engravings to Hollar, but Pennington, Parthey and Hind only the frontispieces, the view of the States General and portraits. Hollar lived at the time at London with the Earl of Arundel, enjoyed the patronage of Charles I and was one of the foremost engravers and illustrators of his day. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Marie de Medici, mother of Louis XIII, exiled in 1630, escaped to Brussels in 1631 (after the failure of her attempted coup against her son), where she lived for seven years, supported by a Spanish pension. She continued intriguing against Richelieu and was forced to flee to Holland, greatly to the indignation of Philip of Spain, who at once stopped her allowance. Her visit to Amsterdam was considered a diplomatic triumph by the Dutch, as it lent official recognition to the newly formed Republic; accordingly she was given an elaborate ceremonial royal entry. Spectacular displays, by Claes Cornelisz Moeyaert, and water pageants took place in the city s harbour. There was a procession led by mounted trumpeters; a large temporary structure erected on an artificial island in the Amstel River was built especially for the festival. The structure was designed to display a series of dramatic tableaux in tribute to her once she set foot on the floating island. She was accompanied by the present author, Puget de La Serre, from Toulouse, librarian of Gaston d'Orl éans and prolific author of novels and histories. His description of Marie s voyage is magnificently illustrated with splendid views of the towns visited and the pageants and ceremonies, including a magnificent double page view of her procession approaching Hertogenbosch where she was met by Prince of Orange. There are further fine etchings showing her disembarking at Gorcum, Dordrecht and at Rotterdam. The whole procession is shown again nearing The Hague, and at Amsterdam a boat-show on the canals is depicted. At Leiden the 'Entr ée  is shown on a quay alongside a canal, and the last plate, shows the Queen Mother's dramatic stormy channel-crossing to England. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Following her travels through the Netherlands, she sought refuge in England which was granted by Charles I. Marie had a grand reception and St. James's Palace was given her as a residence, where she kept a court of her own. However she was mobbed and insulted by the people, even in the palace and forced to leave in 1641. The work is illustrated with superb views of her arrival in Harwich, her entr ée in Colchester, the country houses she stayed at through East Anglia, and her entrance to London. The magnificent double page engraving representing Marie's public entrance into London is particularly interesting; it is one of only two street views extant of the City previous to the great fire. The scene shows the royal cortege in the middle of Cheapside, by the Cheapside Cross, one of the crosses erected by Edward I, to mark the nine resting places of the body of his beloved queen, Eleanor of Castile, on its way from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey. It was destroyed by order of parliament in May 1643. It also depicts the Cheapside Standard, rebuilt in the reign of Henry VI. Stow describes it exactly as represented in this engraving. There are numerous trade signs seen in the illustration; every house had a sign, as shop windows were too small to afford any idea of the trade carried on within. This is followed with scenes of her arrival at St. James Palace, the receptions there, and a view of the Thames, the Tower of London and the firework display that celebrated her arrival. The fine engraved frontispiece and three portraits are among Hollar's finest productions. A superb copy, extremely rare with both parts, of a most interesting and important work. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Henry de la Tremouille 1599-1674, was a celebrated French general, cousin of Cond é and grandson of the prince of Orange, William the Silent, also the grandfather to William III of England. De la Tremouille s last active service was in Italy - where he received the wound that enforced his retirement. A. Walsh, was from a Jacobite ship owning family, resident in St. Malo after 1685, which provided and manned the vessel which took Prince Charles Edward to Scotland in 1745. The family bought the Chateau de Serrant in 1749 and became Comtes de Serrant in 1755. The ch√¢teau passed back to the Tremouille family in 1830 when Valentine Walsh de Serrant married Charles, Duc de La Tremouille.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PUGET DE LA SERRE, Jean","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816117346639,"sku":"L1023","price":13500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0014_ecc9c73f-d3bf-4c49-92f4-58a5aba70354.jpg?v=1781795305"},{"product_id":"francquart-jacques","title":"FRANCQUART, Jacques","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this superb suite of beautiful and very finely engraved plates commemorating, in extraordinary detail, the funeral of Albert VII, engraved after the designs of Jaques Francquart by Cornelis Galle, with a description of the occasion by Puteanus; one of the most eminent works of the golden age of Flemish copperplate engraving. Jacques Francquart (1582\/3 1651) was a Flemish painter, court architect, and an outstanding copper plate engraver, born at Antwerp. He traveled to study in Italy and was apprenticed to Rubens on his return. In 1613 he obtained the position of court painter to the Archduke Albert. He designed the Temple des Augustins which stood on Place de Broukere in Brussels. The Archduke Albert s highly cosmopolitan court became a flourishing centre of the arts, a showcase for other courts throughout Europe. The archduke, with his support of artists such as Rubens, did much to contribute towards the creation and spread of the style later known as 'Flemish Baroque'. The Twelve Year Truce (1609-1621), in the civil war in the Netherlands, brought the necessary peace for a political, economic and in particular cultural revival. Albert surrounded himself with artists, such as Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Brueghel, Wenzel Coebergher, Jacques Franckaert, the composer Peter Philips and the South-Netherlandish humanist Justus Lipsius. Francquart designed the funeral chariot and its engraving in this work is nearly a meter long. The plates depicts of more than 700 members of the funeral cortege. It is also innovative in that he created a table of  hatching  to represent heraldic colours, which is the earliest hatching system in heraldry. The work is particularly interesting in giving a detailed snapshot of the composition of the court of Albert at his death.  When Albert set out for the Netherlands in 1595, his court was almost entirely Spanish. The two mayordomos, all the gentlemen of the bedchamber and every chaplain but one were from the peninsula. .. The transformation was almost complete by the time of his death. None of the mayordomos who marched in the funeral procession was Spanish. One was a Burgundian; the other five were titled noblemen from the Netherlands. There was only one Spaniard among the eight gentlemen of the bedchamber who bore the coffin with Albert s remains. .. On all these levels, the local nobility had taken over.  Luc Duerloo.  Dynasty and Piety: Archduke Albert (1598-1621)  A very good copy of this monumental work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"FRANCQUART, Jacques","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816117477711,"sku":"L1619","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0032.jpg?v=1781795304"},{"product_id":"de-lorme-philibert","title":"DE L'ORME, Philibert","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe third edition, using all the woodcuts of the first (1561), of this important and beautifully printed and illustrated treatise. De L Orme (c.1510-1570),was one of the great Renaissance architects of the 16th century, the first French architect to possess the universal outlook of the Italian masters without merely imitating them. Mindful that French architectural requirements differed from the Italian, and respectful of native materials, he founded his designs on sound engineering principles, fusing the orders with a delicacy of invention, restraint, and harmony characteristic of purest French classicism. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  the simple woodcuts are excellent examples of perfectly understood and clearly presented structural details and show De Lorme s system of built up timber roofs, requiring no ties or heavy timbers, which was successfully used as late as the end of the eighteenth century in the Halle-aux-Bles in Paris. Indeed, De Lorme is unique among the early writers on architecture for the emphasis he placed upon construction. ..A copy of the 1576 edition was in the library of Thomas Jefferson (Sowerby, No. 4183).  Fowler (on the first edition). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Of the leading early French architectural writers, De Lorme is the most interesting and original, but is less distinguished an artist than Jean Bullant and is less versatile as a draughtsman than Du Cerceau. De Lorme has been called the first modern architect because of his original contributions to construction and his skill as an organizer, but Blomfield says that  It was by his strong individuality rather than by his art that De Lorme won, and has maintained, his place among the great Frenchmen of the sixteenth century  (Blomfeld French Arch. I Vol. I p. 92)  Fowler. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  First published in 1561 the  Nouvelles inventions (the treatise on roofs) describes ingenious techniques which replace the use of large rectilinear pieces of square section, with small flat and curved elements assembled like keystones. This new invention appears to comply with a rational approach in industrial terms, in that it keeps costs down, standardises construction and means that a relatively unqualified workforce can be employed. These innovative ideas, which were too revolutionary to achieve much success despite the persuasive force of the author, were not put into practice properly until after 1750, the date when the modern science of building properly emerged.  Vaughan Hart  Paper Palaces   The treatise  Le nouvelles inventions  .... is a milestone in the history of wood inventions as it contains different conceptions of how wood can be used. Anyone who wishes to study wooden roofing has to consider the theories of this French architect.  Maria Rita Campa.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DE L'ORME, Philibert","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816117543247,"sku":"L1511","price":6500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage_fd11f9cf-817b-46f8-b4ec-4ea1f92e5ab8.png?v=1781795304"},{"product_id":"capobianco-alessandro","title":"CAPOBIANCO, Alessandro","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fine copy of the first edition of this important, rare and profusely illustrated work by Capobianco, Captain of the Bombardiers of the city of Crema, that brings together all the technical advances in artillery in the C16, dedicated to Antonio Prioli (future Doge of Venice) and Lunardo Rossetti. By the middle of the 16th century Italian theorists and military architects had perfected the bastioned system of fortification and the Italian method was an admired standard throughout Europe. \"during the sixteenth century the emphasis shifts south of the Alps. And after 1550 Italian military writers dominate the field to the point of monopoly.\" (Horst de la Croix, 'The Literature on Fortification in Renaissance Italy'.) The use of cannons against these new bastioned fortresses required new tactical thinking, which Capobianco elaborates in this work. A veteran of many campaigns in both Italy and the Low Countries he was an expert gunner, though like many of his colleagues he was not a literary man, and his versatility and inventiveness are best shown by his plans and designs. A skilled bombardier, he presents the reader with a sweeping survey of the aims and techniques of artillery around the turn of the C16, starting with the technical use of cannon, their various types and specific purposes, the comparison of modern and 'antique' cannon, their manufacture, sighting etc. He then moves on to the tactics of artillery in defence and attack, the placement of cannons, their transportation, storage and the storage of munitions, the use of rockets and fireworks, and finishes with a brief but insightful description of 'modern' fortification, and bastion techniques. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The binding of this copy is identical in style, with the same central arabesque tool, to a book bound for Thomas Knyvett c. 1610, see David Pearson, English book binding styles 1450-1800, page 9, fig. 1.3. Sir Thomas Knyvett (1539-1618), barrister, of a leading Norfolk family with estates in Lincolnshire, Suffolk, Staffordshire and Yorkshire started to build his splendid collection after the first flood of books and manuscripts from the monastic libraries. At his death his library numbered approximately 1,400 titles and 70 manuscripts on various subjects, as recorded in his library catalogue now in Cambridge University Library, which also received much of his collection in 1715. Favouring original texts, he became proficient in many languages, nurturing a particular love of Italian, owning at least 80 Italian books. Never a very rich man, the size of his library is extraordinary for the period, and it is likely that many of his books were obtained second hand. This binding is typical of those bound for his collection. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Sutton Place, built in 1530 for Sir Richard Weston, is celebrated as a pioneer of the Renaissance style in England, an early Tudor House, innovative for the symmetry of its design and its Italianate terracotta decoration. It was later the home of J. Paul Getty.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CAPOBIANCO, Alessandro","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816120426831,"sku":"L680","price":12500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0080.jpg?v=1781795296"},{"product_id":"agricola-georgius-bauer-georg-1","title":"AGRICOLA, Georgius (BAUER, Georg)","description":"\u003cp\u003eSECOND EDITION of the \"first systematic treatise on mining and metallurgy and one of the first technological books of modern times\" (PMM), the earliest and pre-eminent early work on metallurgy and mining. It is remarkably richly illustrated with technical woodcuts of the highest quality, largely by Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch (after Blasius Weffring). All of them are based on Agricola's own drawings of processes and phenomena he personally observed. The work \"embraces everything connected with the mining industry and metallurgical processes, including administration, prospecting, the duties of officials and companies and the manufacture of glass, sulphur and alum. The magnificent series of two hundred and seventy three large woodcut illustrations add to its value. Some of the most important sections are those on mechanical engineering and the use of water power, hauling pumps, ventilation, blowing of furnaces, transport of ores etc., showing a very elaborate technique\" (PMM). It is \"one of the great monuments of technology by reason of the comprehensiveness of its text and the detail and intelligibility of its numerous illustrations\" (Singer, vol II, p. 27), and became \"the early standard treatise\" on the subject (Horblit, 2b). It is also one of the important contributions to physical geology, in particular the influence of wind and water erosion on landscape and its clear account of the order of strata exposed by mines. The work concludes with a 20 page glossary of technical terms and names in Latin and German which contains a new scientific classification of minerals based on their physical properties; the mode of occurrence and mutual relation of some 80 minerals and ores are discussed, no less than 21 of them for the first time. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Written over two decades, the work illustrates Bauer's familiarity both with the technical and financial aspects of mining as well as his concern for the health of the miners. Bauer had studied medicine in Leipzig before moving to the important mining centre of Joachimstal (in latter-day Czechoslovakia) as the town physician. There, Bauer observed both by day and by night the unceasing activities of the mines, \"and his interests were aroused by the metallurgical, mineralogical and chemical problems of the trade. He published several books relating to these, the above is outstanding in the field of all science and technology; it was published posthumously. Many large woodcuts present vivid pictures of men at work, machines pumping, ventilating, smelting, assaying, transportation, and hoisting equipment and methods of his time\" (Dibner, Heralds of Science, 88). The work was translated into English in 1912 by Herbert Hoover, afterwards president of the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"AGRICOLA, Georgius (BAUER, Georg)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816121114959,"sku":"L1730","price":12500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot2026-06-27at6.37.22PM.png?v=1782581902"},{"product_id":"johnston-john","title":"JOHNSTON, John","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of this rare work by Johnston (?1570-1611) Scottish poet, who styled himself  Aberdonensis  and whose family hailed from Crimond near Aberdeen - where Johnston studied at Kings College, before spending eight years at various continental universities. He became a friend of Justus Lipsius and doubtless of the other scholars whose epigrams preface the present work - among them Joseph Scaliger, Jan Dousa and Daniel Heinsius. He was also closely attached to Andrew Melville, who probably helped him to obtain the professorship of divinity at St. Andrews c1593, when he was  Maister of the new college . The present work is a series of epigrammatic addresses to the Scottish Kings from Fergus I to James VI (to whom it is dedicated) highlighting their characteristics, exhibiting their virtues and referring to the principal events of their reigns. The verses are more interesting for their historical perspective than their poetry. The anonymous portraits - of Robert II, Robert III, James II, James III, James IV, James V, Mary, James VI and Anne are very finely executed and in excellent strong impression. Neither their source nor maker has been identified. In mid C19 hand on inserted fly  A very rare book. The Roxburghe copy sold for ¬£13.13. In addition to the 10 portraits this copy has a plate of the arms of James VI ... which has not been mentioned by Lowndes, + 1 leaf of preliminary matters (beginning with the verses of J.C. Scaliger) seldom found. At a sale in 1854 or 5 (I think at W. Duncan Gardiner s) a copy was sold for ¬£10 to Lord Breadalbane .\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"JOHNSTON, John","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816122655055,"sku":"L119","price":1950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_0001_2fe970be-4bc6-4ee3-841b-5567342b9cf6.jpg?v=1781795285"},{"product_id":"ramelli-agostino","title":"RAMELLI, Agostino","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the most important and most impressive  book of machines  of the C16th, an outstanding example of French book production; illustrated with 195 full-page engravings, it is one of the earliest and most elaborate pictorial technical works to be printed.  This volume is dedicated to the King and special care was taken to make it appropriate as an expression of gratitude for Royal favor and protection. There is also a second factor governing the circumstances of publication. In his address to the reader, Ramelli complains of piracy of his designs which resulted in their publication in corrupt and mutilated forms destroying the original accuracy of his inventions. As a result of this experience, Ramelli planned this work as a particularly handsome volume, difficult to counterfeit, strictly supervised by the author himself and published with the imprint, 'in casa del' autore'\"   Mortimer. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The Ramelli machines are concerned especially with hydraulics or mechanisms of warfare. The superb illustrations show the machines in use with their parts indicated by letters explained in the accompanying text. They are extremely finely worked and detailed, with great care taken to present the machine in landscape settings with figures employed in demonstrating them. Ramelli s designs cover water-raising devices, wells, mills, mobile bridges, machines for breaking through doors and metal bars, cranes, excavating equipment, fountains, and projectile devices. He described and illustrated for the first time the rotary pump, mechanical details of windmills, and a coffer-dam of interlocking piles, and like other writers of the period he designed biological automata in the form of hydraulically operated singing birds. including one notable departure into the world of domestic gadgetry, a revolving bookcase designed to enable a reader to peruse multiple volumes without having to leave his seat. Ramelli was greatly influenced by the increasing importance placed on mathematics and geometry as an important tool for engineers and artists, and particularly by the writings of Guidobaldo del Monte (1545-1607) and Petrus Ramus (1515-1572). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Ramelli's interest in mathematics is demonstrated in the preface,  On the excellence of mathematics in which is shown how necessary mathematics are for learning all the liberal arts.   Ramelli also wanted to make his book accessible to many engineers so, as an Italian living in France, he produced both Italian and French descriptions of the machines. Ramelli's bilingual descriptions are much more detailed than those found in previous illustrated books of machines by Jacques Besson and Jean Errard de Bar-le-Duc. Ramelli's book had a great influence on future mechanical engineering; Georg Andreas Böckler's, Theatrum machinarum novum, 1662, copied eighteen of Ramelli's plates.  Ramelli's influence can also be seen in the well-known works of Grollier de Servière (Recueil d'ouvrages curieux de mathematique et de mecanique, 1719) and Jacob Leupold (the multi-volume set Theatrum machinarum, 1724-1739). Leupold's work helped pass along Ramelli's ideas to a large population of eighteenth-century engineers. Only the one edition of the book was issued during Ramelli's lifetime. In 1620, a German translation appeared in Leipzig as Schatzkammer, mechanischer Künste..., published by Henning Grossen den Jüngern with the illustrations re-engraved by Andreas Bretschneider.  Ronald Brashear, Smithsonian libraries.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RAMELLI, Agostino","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816125768015,"sku":"L1572","price":27500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage_dfe78da6-346e-4a37-98ce-4900a28da997.png?v=1781795279"},{"product_id":"stoffler-johannes-and-pitati-pietro","title":"ST√ñFFLER, Johannes and PITATI, Pietro","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn expanded and beautiful edition of the almanac by Johannes Stöffler. As with all books of this kind, it had a wide circulation, but complete copies are rare and sought after. The volume provides the positions of stars at regular intervals of date and time, through detailed tables of value. It includes five introductive treatises on astronomic rules and phenomena, along with the celestial calculations from 1551 up to 1555, all by Pietro Pitati. Stöffler (1452-1531) was a German mathematician, astronomer and priest. He invented some astronomical instruments and taught at the University of Tübingen. Embracing the timespan 1499-1551, his celestial calculations continued those by Regiomontanus (1436-1476) and exerted a paramount influence over contemporary astronomical and astrological knowledge. The sixteenth-century Italian scholar Pietro Pitati was a professor of astronomy in Verona. The book is dedicated to the city bishop and prominent cardinal Gian Matteo Giberti. Pitati s ephemerides published in Venice in 1542 are regarded as the earliest Italian publication of this genre. He kept publishing his calculation up to the year 1562. In his Compendium super annua solaris (1560), he put forward for the first time the idea of omitting the Julian leap day in three out of four centennial years, so to keep the calendar in line with the solar year. Rare.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ST√ñFFLER, Johannes and PITATI, Pietro","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816126619983,"sku":"L1860","price":4850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage_397e283d-7929-4ac0-881a-e92ef0e8e901.png?v=1781795275"},{"product_id":"gysius-johannes-and-las-casas-bartolome_","title":"GYSIUS, Johannes and LAS CASAS, Bartolome_","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of the of these two important works published in the Netherlands in 1620, containing French translations of two earlier works detailing Spanish crimes and atrocities in both Europe and the New World. The first part is an abridged version of  Oorsprong en voortgang der Nederlandtscher beroerten  (Origin and progress of the disturbances in the Netherlands) by Johannes Gysius (died 1652), first published anonymously in 1616. The second part is a translation of Brev√≠sima relaci√≥n de la destrucci√≥n de las Indias (A short account of the destruction of the Indies), written by Bartolom é de las Casas (1474 1566) in 1542 and first published in 1552. These histories were published together under a new title by Jan Evertszoon Cloppenburch (1571 1648), an Amsterdam bookbinder and publisher of Bibles and patriotic and religious books and tracts associated with the Dutch Reformed Church. Gysius was a minister, whose book is a history of the Dutch revolt against Spain in 1555 98, containing accounts of such events as the sieges of Haarlem, Leiden, and other cities and the execution by the Spanish of Count Egmont in Brussels in 1568. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Las Casas was reprinted in 1620 and 1630. The first of these editions appeared in Amsterdam without any prefatory matter not even the author s .. relying largely on copperplates to tell a pictoral story of torture and cruelty on the title page and throughout the text. The publisher, Jan Evertz Cloppenburg, presented a typology of Spanish cruelty. He included two title pages set up in identical ways with the same pictures . The first,..was on the Low countries and the second was about the new World and preceded Las Casas s account. The first title page included writing surrounded by pictures of men, women and children being tortured. Philip of Spain presided at the top and centre above the title, his vassals  Don Jan  and the  Duke of Alva  are shown facing the title: the Spanish cruelty in the Netherlands was mirroring that in the New World. .. This symbolic correspondence was a central typology of the Old World and New. Cloppenburg was asking the readers to see the Old World through the New. .. Here the publisher says that the Spaniards brought war and tyranny to the Low countries under the same religious pretext that they used to tyrannise the Natives in the New World a hundred years before. The heretics and the Lutherans in the Netherlands had taken the place of the pagans an Idolaters of the New World. .. In some of the engravings in Cloppenburg s edition, the inhabitants of the Netherlands are naked like the Natives. The translation, which is from the dutch, sometimes elaborates beyond Las Casas s original to make the Spaniards seem even crueler. The engravings of the Flemmish artist Theodore de Bry, which had been in the Frankfurt Latin edition of Las Casas in 1598, constituted part of this edition, where they reinforced visually the worst atrocities in the text.  Jonathan Hart  Literature, Theory, History.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A good copy of this important reinterpretation both these works.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"GYSIUS, Johannes and LAS CASAS, Bartolome_","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816127144271,"sku":"L1795","price":4850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/l1795-le-miroir-10.jpg?v=1781795273"},{"product_id":"rhodiginus-caelius","title":"RHODIGINUS, Caelius","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of these massive and learned commentaries of the Italian Renaissance in sixteen books. Caelius Rhodiginus is the humanist nickname of Ludovico Ricchieri (1469-1525), a respected professor of Latin and Greek in Rovigo. In 1511, Rhodiginus moved to Milan to take over the lectureship of Demetrios Chalcondyles, under the auspices of the city treasurer and renowned book collector Jean Grolier. The Antiquae lectiones are dedicated to Grolier, with a remembrance of Aldus Manutius, recently dead. The work gathers together a considerable number of short essays and notes on Latin and Greek antiquity, ranging from literature, philology and science to philosophy, history, anthropology and morality. Remarkable considerations on ancient music are to be found in book five, chapters XX-XXIX. The somewhat confusing encyclopaedic structure was modelled after Gellio s Noctes Atticae and Erasmus s Adagia. The book was very well received and was frequently reprinted up to 1666. Despite some initials charges of plagiarism, even Erasmus ended up to value Ricchieri s work. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n In his Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries (London 1869, I, p. 272), Henry Hallam defines it as  by far the best and most extensive collection hitherto made from the stores of antiquity. It is now hardly remembered; but obtained almost universal praise, even from severe critics, for the deep erudition of its author, who, in a somewhat rude style, pours forth explanations of obscure and emendations of corrupted passages, with profuse display of knowledge in the customs and even philosophy of the ancients, but more especially in medicine and botany.  This copy was annotated by a contemporary reader mainly interested in the philosophical passages, while the owner inscribing the head of the title-page commented on two musical essays at pp. 231-233.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RHODIGINUS, Caelius","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816127537487,"sku":"L1764","price":5750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Last-Import-12_a9eeeffe-642c-4401-8518-6877f99995a2.jpg?v=1781795273"},{"product_id":"bible-1","title":"BIBLE","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis charming and prettily decorated portable Bible is an untouched and unspoiled early example of the Parisian Bible of the 13th century. It was copied and decorated in the second quarter of the century, shortly after university theologians completed the standardization of the biblical texts. The new Vulgate had been created to facilitate university teachers and members of the preaching orders, who often travelled between universities, monasteries and church congregations in different parts of the country. It was therefore conceived as a text that could be copied in volumes of diminutive format, written on very fine parchment in the tiny formal Gothic script mostly used until then for marginal glosses. The new biblical vulgate started circulating in its final form about 1230. The present manuscript is therefore an early representative of the Parisian Vulgate. The text is complete and all the canonical prologues, each rubricated in full and decorated with an illuminated or a pen-flourished initial. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The initials are elegantly decorated with twirling rinceaux in colour and gold, and sometime include small dragons or other grotesque winged animals intertwined with the scrolling foliage. The puzzle initials, formed of interlocked scalloped segments in red and blue separated by a thin white line, are filled with curling pen-work decoration dotted in blue. A similarly curling and dotted decoration surrounds them and elongates into the margins in elegant pen strokes of red and blue. The style of the painted decoration resembles closely to works of the Parisian workshop known as the  Vie de saint Denis Atelier  (active 1230-1250) for the Benedictines of the Priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Paris and the Cistercians of Clairvaux Abbey (see Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de france, MS latin 233). It also closely recalls the style of manuscripts produced at the same time in Amiens, Northern France for the Benedictine Abbeys of Anchin, and Marchiennes (see Douai, Bibliothèque Municipale, MSS 18, 20 and 21). The small codicological feature of parchment tabs marking the beginning of books, now removed from the present manuscript, adds a further link to manuscript Bibles produced at Amiens for monastic use (see R. Branner, Manuscript Paintings in Paris during the Reign of Saint Louis; a Study of Styles, Berkeley, 1977, cat. 210, pl. X). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n In the 13th century the manuscript was used in a monastic or ecclesiastical institution as indicated by the index of liturgical readings added at the end of the volume by a 13th-century hand which was more used to writing monastic cartularies or ecclesiastical deeds than liturgical books. The prominence given to the feast of St Vincent of Saragossa (22 January) at the beginning of the readings for the Proper of the Saints, suggests a particular devotion to the saint. St Vincent is the patron saint of Macon and Viviers in France, Berne in Switzerland and Soignies in Belgium. A particular veneration for St Vincent and the probable Flemish origin of the fifteenth century binding combine to point to the collegiate church of St Vincent at Soignies as the probable 13th-century owner. St Vincent s was built as the church of the Benedictine Abbey founded by St Vincent Madelgarius (d. 677), a Flemish nobleman. Soignies Abbey was dissolved and transformed in secular Chapter in the 11th century. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n In the 17th century the book was in Prussia, in the possession of Johann Friedrich Bessel, a philologist of Tilsit, respondent and praeses at the Universities of Wittenberg and Helmstedt between 1654 and 1667. Left after Bessel s death with others of his book to Christopher Horch Senior, possibly the father of the German physician Christopher Horch (1667-1754) of Berlin, it was given by Horch to an unidentifed individual on 13 February 1682 ( Hac Biblia manuscripta donata \/ mihi fuit √† Dn. Christophero \/ Horch Sen. ex libris relictis \/ B. Dn. M. Besselj \/ Anno 1682 .d. 13 Febr.  on upper pastedown). The unnamed recipient of the book was probably either Heinrich Bartsch (1627-1702), councillor, treasurer and vice-mayor of Könisberg, who gave his collection to Könisberg Stadtbibliothek, or his son Heinrich Bartsch Jr (1667-1728), a jurist at the University of Wittenberg. In 1718 the library was opened to the public by Bartsch Junior, who donated his collection of Bibles. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n In the 19th century the book was stamped  Stadtbibliothek Koenigsberg  twice in the lower margin of fol. 1 recto. The Bible is mentioned in the library catalogue A. Seraphim, Handschriften-Katalog der Stadtbibliothek Königsberg i.Pr., Königsberg i.Pr., 1909, p. 300. The library was destroyed by a bomb in August 1944. Since 1946 Königsberg has been part of Russia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BIBLE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816127963471,"sku":"K36","price":150000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_7999.jpg?v=1781795270"},{"product_id":"joachim-de-fiore","title":"JOACHIM, De Fiore","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst edition, beautifully illustrated with the fine engraving of Giralamo Porro, of the medieval Papal prophecies, wrongly attributed to Joachim of Fiore, including a final prophecy predicting the fall of the Turkish Empire, the so called  Red Apple  prophecy. The work contains the commentary on the prophecies by Pasqualino Regiselmo. There were three variants of this first edition according to Edit 16, all line by line copies, and this copy has been extra illustrated with the variant, fine, full page engraved portrait of Joachim writing by divine inspiration; it also has the full page image of the  Wheel of the Popes . There follow the 30 prophecies in Latin and Italian, each illustrated by fine emblematic engravings, the Turkish prophecy, with a full page illustration, and Regiselmo s commentary. A series of prophecies concerning the Papacy circulated in ms. from the late thirteenth to early fourteenth century concerning popes from Pope Nicholas III onwards, in the form of a Latin text which assembled portraits of popes and the prophecies related to them. The texts and illustrations are so closely related they must have been conceived together. The prophecies, based on Greek prototypes, were probably intended to influence one of the ongoing papal elections, possibly written in opposition to the Orsini and their candidates. They are derived from the Byzantine Leo Oracles, a series of twelfth-century Byzantine prophecies that foretell a savior-emperor destined to restore unity to the empire. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The series was augmented in the fourteenth century with further prophecies, written in imitation of the earlier, but with more overtly propagandist aims. By the time of the Council of Constance (1414 1418), both series were united as the  Vaticinia de summis pontificibus  and misattributed to the Calabrian mystic Joachim de Fiore. Each prophecy consists of four elements, an enigmatic allegorical text, an emblematic picture, a motto, and an attribution to a pope. The final prophecy tells the vision of Mehemet II in which he holds a red apple which becomes progressively heavier and heavier so as to be unbearable. It prophesies the capture of Constantinople from the Christians and its later recapture and destruction of the Turks. A very good copy of this finely illustrated work.The second book contains prophetic writings falsely ascribed to Joachim, Anselmus, and other medieval mystics, illustrated with six complex prophetic astrological wheels related to various Popes. This works had previously been published with woodcut illustrations; Girolamo Porro was the first artist to supply these superb copper-engraved plates. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Sir George Webbe Dasent (1817 1896) was a translator of folk tales, a friend of Jacob Grimm, at whose recommendation he first became interested in Scandinavian literature and mythology. In 1842 he published the first result of his studies, an English translation of  The Prose or Younger Edda . In the following year he translated Rask's  Grammar of the Icelandic or Old-Norse Tongue , taken from the Danish, and later  The Story of Burnt Njal', a translation of the Icelandic  Njal's Saga  and  East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon , a collection of Norwegian fairy stories. The book then passed into the extraordinary collection of the famous bibliophile Thompson-Yates. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The binding is of great interest. Guigard (Vol I p. 20-22) attributes the monogram HD with the surrounding four S  tools to Henry IV of France and his lover, and the mother of his Children, the famous courtesan Gabrielle D Estr ées.. He suggests that as this monogram also appears on a work with Louis XIII s and Ann of Austria s crowned monograms, the work could have passed from Gabrielle s library to Louis . The S with a line through it is thought to be a punning cipher, devised by Henry IV, for Gabrielle d Estr ées; the surname being represented by a capital S. with  un trait , or stroke through it (S-trait - Estr ées.). Hobson devoted an entire article on the 'S' appearing on book bindings from ca. 1580 till 1640 and surrounding a monogram. (G.D. Hobson, 'Le problème de l'S ferm é': Hobson,  Les reliures √† la fanfare , pp. 85-119, Amsterdam 1970) He rejects Guigard s suggestion that the monogram could be that of King Henry IV, and Gabrielle d Estr ées. Hobson considers various possibilities regarding the meaning of the 'closed S , suggesting it could be an emblem of fidelity or an emblem of the loyalty to the Bourbon family; it could also mean  Sigillum'. Guigard also states that the  S could stand for  fermesse pour fermement. Cette interpretation est confirm ée par le Seigneur des Accords  but also notes that the monogram appears on other bindings that don t have a sentimental attachment to them. A most intriguing binding and a lovely copy of these works, with excellent provenance.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"JOACHIM, De Fiore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816129077583,"sku":"L1885","price":4750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1885-Joachim-2-e1439395855870.jpg?v=1781795267"},{"product_id":"piccolomini-alessandro","title":"PICCOLOMINI, Alessandro","description":"\u003cp\u003eSixth edition of this very influential Italian cosmography paired with a much important illustration of the Ptolemaic constellations, originally published together in 1540. The same years as this edition, another more common reprint by Varisco appeared in Venice. The scion of a papal family in Siena, Alessandro Piccolomini (1508-1578) was a leading Renaissance humanist, philosopher, dramatist and astronomer. He was a founding member of many Italian academies, notably the Intronati and Infiammati. After teaching philosophy in Padua, he moved to Rome and Siena to started an ecclesiastical career, which eventually led him to being appointed archbishop of Patras. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A partisan of the Italian vernacular, he intentionally avoided Latin in his numerous works. These comprise a couple of moral comedies and collections of his letters and sonnets, several philosophical treatises and translations of classical authors, as well as his famous astronomical essays. Among them, La Sfera and Le Stelle fisse stand out for accuracy and success. The first describes the universe following the traditional Ptolemaic-Aristotelian geocentric cosmography, while the second contains the one of the earliest star atlases to be published in the Western World. All Ptolemy s 48 constellations, save Equuleus, were displayed without the traditional depiction of the related animals. Piccolomini introduced here the practice of identification of stars by Latin letters, which would be adopted using the Greek alphabet by Johann Bayer some seventy years later. The lunar crater Piccolomini is named after him.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PICCOLOMINI, Alessandro","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816129700175,"sku":"L1976","price":2500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L1976-Piccolomini-4.jpg?v=1781795266"},{"product_id":"tagliacozzi-gaspare","title":"TAGLIACOZZI, Gaspare","description":"\u003cp\u003eMost complete issue of the first edition of this curious medical work, devoted entirely to plastic surgery and providing the first instruction for reconstructing nose, lips and ears. Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545-1599) was a pioneering Italian physician and pupil of Girolamo Cardano, Ulisse Aldrovandi and Giulio Cesare Avanzi. Upon his graduation, he was appointed lecturer of surgery at the University of Bologna; later, he became one of the most acclaimed professors of the athenaeum, demonstrating his techniques of dissection on recently-dead bodies. A pious man, he was charged by the cardinals  Congregation over the Index of Forbidden Books with the emendation of the works of the Lutheran botanist Leonhardt Fuchs. In Bologna, he also offered his service to the hospital of the Brotherhood of the Death; this local religious fellowship engaged with comforting the prisoners condemned to die. Through this privileged hannel, Tagliacozzi had always plenty of corpses for his anatomical and surgical studies. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n De curtorum chirurgia was Tagliacozzi s most renowned achievement. In the work, he improved and described for the first time the so-called metodo italiano, a technique of facial reconstruction via a skin graft taken from the left forearm. The well-known twenty-two plates depict surgical instruments and document every step of the process of rhinoplasty. Following the operation, the patient was immobilised in a complex vest devised by Tagliacozzi himself, waiting for the complete adherence of the graft to his nose. The process was supposed to take from two to three weeks. Tagliacozzi was aware of some aesthetic imperfection of the result, but was more concerned with the relieving benefits he wished to give to his patients  mind and spirit. His fame as  the first plastic surgeon  was so wide that several Italian noblemen sought his service. Among them, the Duke of Mantua Vincenzo Gonzaga, to whom De curtorum chirurgia is dedicated.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TAGLIACOZZI, Gaspare","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816130060623,"sku":"K33","price":39500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K33-2.jpg?v=1781795265"},{"product_id":"book-of-hours-2","title":"BOOK OF HOURS","description":" This charming Book of Hours was produced in Bruges. These books were the result of the work of a number of different artisans and artists working separately on the different phases of production - the copying of the text, the decoration of minor initials and line fillers, and the illumination of initials, borders and miniatures. \n  \n The devotional texts were usually copied on dedicated single or multiple quires according to their length, with the beginnings of the canonical hours copied on rectos; they were then assembled in volumes whose textual sequences corresponded to the requirements of the individual customers, with dedicated miniatures inserted to face the beginning of the canonical hours and other illumination and decoration added to the clients  taste and means. \n  \n All the illuminated miniatures of the present manuscript are on the verso of added singletons whose parchment is often heavier and thicker than the soft and beautiful parchment of the quires, which shows hardly any visible difference between the flesh and the hair side. \n  \n It is therefore unusual to find manuscripts made by the same scribe, rubricator, decorator and illuminator\/s, but each of their components may find matches in different manuscripts. This manuscript shows the same textual and illustrative sequence as London, British Library, MSS Harley 1853 and Stowe 26, but for the absence of the Mass of the Virgin and perhaps of the Psalter of St Jerome at the end. The three manuscripts are also similarly diminutive. Its beautiful Italianate Gothic hand matches that of Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum MS. W. 179. The rubrication and decoration of minor initials and line-fillers is close to that of Les Enlumineures Book of Hours 61, BL Stowe MS 26, Walters MSS 190 and 196 (made for Queen Eleanor of Portugal), and the Derval Hours, Sotheby s, 5 July 2005, lot 98 (made for Jean de Ch√¢teaugiron, seigneur de Derval and chamberlain of Brittany). The accomplished decoration of the borders finds correspondence in Les Enlumineures Book of Hours 61 and possibly Chicago, Newberry Library, Case MS. 35 (the Mildmay Hours). \n  \n The sequence of miniatures for the Hours of the Virgin corresponds to the cycle of the Infancy of Christ as was customary in Southern Flanders at the time (see B. Bousmanne, \"Item a Guillaume Wyelant aussi enlumineur,\" Bruxelles, 1997, p. 164). The manuscript was undoubtedly illuminated in the circle of Wilhelm Vrelant (d. 1481; active in Bruges from 1454), the most successful illuminator in Bruges at that time. His patrons included the Dukes of Burgundy and members of their family and court as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian royalty, diplomats, aristocrats, bankers and wealthy merchants. \n  \n Judging from their surviving manuscripts, he and his collaborators produced devotional books in far greater numbers than any other text; it is therefore not surprising that at the time the so-called  Vrelant style  became very popular and had a strong impact on the production of Books of Hours. \n  \n The full-page miniatures are in the style of an anonymous illuminator singled out among Vrelant s collaborators by Nicholas Rogers and given the name of the Mildmay Master after a Book of Hours in the Newberry Library in Chicago (Case MS. 35) that in the 16th century belonged to Sir Thomas Mildmay (b. in or before 1515, d. 1566), Auditor of the Court of Augmentations for Henry VIII. The master collaborated with Vrelant in the decoration of a four-volume copy of the Golden Legend in French translation for Jean d Auxy, knight of the Golden Fleece (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MSS 672-675. \n  \n A direct comparison with the Book of Hours in the British Library (Harley MS 3000) suggests that the artist working on the present manuscript is not the Mildmay Master, even though he is seemingly the same artist of a Book of Hours attributed to him in S. Hindman and A. Bergeron-Foote, An intimate Art. 12 Books of Hours for 2012, London, 2012. He is also the same artist of another devotional manuscript (Walters MS. W. 177). \n  \n The anonymous artist of these three manuscripts managed to avoid the sharp linearity and rarefied stillness that characterise the works of the Mildmay Master and used a different and warmer palette of deeper blues and reds. The iconography of his decorative cycles follows the models employed by Vrelant and his followers, but his miniatures display distinctive delicate features for the Virgin (see here the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi on fols 24v, 64v and 78v), elongated male faces (in particular of Christ on the Cross and David in prayer on fols 1v and 124v), landscapes of rolling green hills and mountains turning to dark blue in the distance, and interiors characterised by gilt-embroidered tapestries and pink and grey walls with white-stucco decoration that includes a very distinctive element. \n  \n This element recalls the monograms in the trade-mark stamps imposed on the Bruges illuminators by the town administration to stop the import of illuminated single leaves by foreign artists who were not registered with the Guild. This decorative element is particularly similar to the stamp of Adriaen de Raedt, an apprentice of Vrelant in the years 1473-1475, who was occasionally named as Vrelant in the Guild s documents. \n  \n Almost all miniatures in the present book are a simplified version of the standardized Flemish iconography for the cycle of the Infancy of Christ disseminated by Vrelant and his followers, and found, for instance, in two Books of Hours attributed to Wilhelm Vrelant and\/or associates(Walters MSS W. 196 and 197), and in the Arenberg Hours attributed to the Mildmay Master (Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig IX 8 (83.ML.104)). The fall of the idol from the column in the miniature of the Flight to Egypt (fol. 103v), in particular, is reminiscent of the Mildmay Master s representations of the Apostle Bartolomew and Felix of Ostia destroying Idols or Mamertinus of Auxerre praying to Idols in the New York Golden Legend (PML, MS. M 675, fols 22r, 51r and 56v respectively). \n  \n The representation of the Crucifixion is the only exception. In the figures of the fore-ground and the landscape in the background our artist paraphrases the Crucifixion in Vrelant s style as found in Walters MS. W. 197 (fol. 34v) and the Arenberg Hours (fol. 134r), but for the central scene of the Crucifixion with Christ flanked by the two thieves he seems to look elsewhere, possibly at the Crucifixion attributed to the so-called Vienna Master of Mary of Burgundy in the Hours of Mary of Burgundy (Vienna, √ñsterreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS. 1857, fol. 99v) and the Trivulzio Hours (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. SMCi, fol. 94v), executed about 1470-1475, which echo the Crucifixion in Joos van Ghent s Calvary triptych of the late 1460s. A similar dating for the present manuscript is consistent with the style of the all its other features. \n  \n The volume provides no clue towards the identification of its original owner. Like many famous Bruges manuscripts such as the Spinola Hours (Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig IX 18) and the Grimani Breviary (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MS. Lat. I, 99) copied by scribes imitating Italian bookhands, or indeed by Italian scribes working in a Bruges, and decorated by Flemish artists, the present book was beautifully produced on smooth white parchment of the highest quality and copied in an elegant round Italianate Gothic hand. \n  \n The litany is of Augustinian Use, with Paul the First Hermit and Nicholas of Tolentino (canonized in 1446) among the doctors and confessors and Monica among the Virgins; other saints added to an otherwise standard text for the Use of Rome are Alexis at the end of monks and hermits, and Saints Margaret, Barbara and Elisabeth among the Virgins. \n  \n The masculine forms used in most prayers, including  Obsecro te  and  Intemerata , with the only exception of the last, suggest that the book belonged to a man; the inclusion of the prayer  Deus propicius esto mihi peccatori et custos mei sis omnibus diebus vite mee,  traditionally attributed to St. Augustine, may indicate that he was a man of some importance, possibly a member of the large Italian community of merchants and bankers in Bruges, or a major local patron.","brand":"BOOK OF HOURS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816131764559,"sku":"K34","price":95000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_7956.jpg?v=1781795260"},{"product_id":"tornamira-francisco-vicente-de","title":"TORNAMIRA, Francisco Vicente de","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of a wide-ranging astronomical, cosmographical and historical book, one of the first of its kind to be directly written in Spanish. Little is known of the life of Francisco Vicente de Tornamira (1534   1597), born in Tudela, Navarre. Chronographia was the most influential work of this prominent Spanish astronomer, illustrating in 162 chapters the creation of the universe, the various branches of philosophy, the movement of planets, the constellations and the Zodiac, the universal chronology realm by realm, a series of calendars, almanacs and weather forecasts. All the subjects were elucidated further with a large number of illustrations, including, most notably, a traditional depiction of the Armillary Sphere and other globes, the Astronomical Man and the Roman gods on their chariots representing the planets named after them. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A fervent supporter of Ptolemaic vision of the universe against the heliocentric theory, Tornamira comes up with convoluted explanations to bridge the gap between mathematical calculation and the traditional model of planetary movement. A most interesting part is devoted to the solar calendar and the recent reform introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, discussing the exact days of the year in which Lent, Corpus Domini and Easter should be celebrated. Tornamira expanded on this topic in his subsequent work, the Spanish translation of the new Gregorian calendar (1591). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  On p. 40 there is a reference to the Magellan circumnavigation; on p. 497 a list of the midsummer s days of the New World; on p. 538-539 locations of New World cities.  Alden 585\/67.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TORNAMIRA, Francisco Vicente de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816133173583,"sku":"L2100","price":5250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage_58d321ef-f136-42e3-94ac-f02255bd5756.png?v=1781795254"},{"product_id":"bible-cistercian","title":"BIBLE, Cistercian","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis large splendid volume was produced in Northern Italy in the second half of the twelfth century for the use of a monastery of the Cistercian order, established in 1098 by Robert of Molesme at C√Æteaux. The unusual order of the biblical texts (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel; Epistles, Acts and Apocalypse; the Gospels), reflects a programme of reading in the Night Office carried out in Cistercian communities from Advent to Epiphany, Lent, and Easter to Pentecost (ordo librorum ad legendum; Reilly 2005, pp. 169-170). The Cistercians included the reading of the four Gospels into the refectory element of their annual cycle, but excluded the Passion narratives as highlighted in the manuscript by the marginal notes  Hic dimittatur legere in refectorio  (fols 201r, 215r, 239r) (Webber 2010, pp. 20 n. 47, 32). The large size of the volume, the two-column layout, well-spaced lettering and use of red minor initials throughout were designed to assure legibility for reading aloud. The principal hand is a very fine example of top quality 12th century calligraphy, elegant yet clearly legible. The additional punctuation supplied by the second hand in a darker ink in accordance with the Cistercian practice of indicating short, medium and long pauses in the reading, supplied further helpful guidance (Parkes 1992, pp. 195, 197). The textual corrections by this second hand testify to the attention paid to the correctness of biblical texts in accordance with St Bernard of Clairvaux s wishes. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The sober yet elegant decoration of the initials also follows the Cistercian practice of austerity, including restrained decoration in their manuscripts. The initials to Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel are similar in style to those found in a 12th-century manuscript Bible now in the Biblioteca Civica  Angelo Mai  at Bergamo, MA 600 (olim Alpha V 17; see Zizzo), with an almost certain Cistercian origin. The three initials in red with reserved and red and black penwork decoration on leaves 110r-111v are consistent with the decoration of Cistercian manuscripts produced in Italy, as in two 12th-century codices; an Office lectionary at Harvard, Houghton Library, Typ 223 online at http:\/\/hcl.harvard.edu\/libraries\/houghton\/collections\/early_manuscripts\/bibliographies\/Typ.cfm, from the Abbey of Morimondo (Ferrari 1993, p. 299) and from Acquafredda Abbey (see Ferrari 1993, p. 295) a 12th century Commentary on The Old Testament-Pentateuch by Isidore of Seville and Hugh of St Victor s Rex Salomon, now at Berkeley, Bancroft Library, MS UCB 16. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Both these manuscripts have covers almost identical to the present, and bear similar titles on the second spine compartment, also found on Jerome s Commentary on the Minor Prophets, now Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Gerli MS 12, identified by Ferrari (Ferrari 1999, pp. 36, 41-42, 44) as one of the manuscripts mentioned in the twelfth-century book list from the Abbey of Morimondo found on the last verso of the Abbey s Office lectionary mentioned above (Houghton Library, Typ 223). \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The present manuscript shares the same 18th-century provenance, if not origin, as those three manuscripts now at Milan, Berkeley and Cambridge. From the beginning of the eighteenth century many manuscripts from Cistercian abbeys in Lombardy were collected at the monastery of S. Ambrogio in Milan to support the programme of cultural reform promoted by the Congregation of St Bernard in Italy and the Austrian government. On arrival at S. Ambrogio, they may have been supplied with new covers and a manuscript title on the spine. The present manuscript must have arrived about the same time, when the influx increased exponentially with the suppressions of the monasteries in the last quarter of the century; many of these codices were then dispersed onto the open market. A good number were acquired by the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, but many entered private collections, such as those of the marchesi Trivulzio of Milan, Count Francesco Giovio (1796 - 1873) of Como, and Matteo Luigi Canonici (1727 - 1805), Jesuit and antiquarian of Venice, further dispersed through later sales. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A twentieth-century note in English pencilled on the upper flyleaf suggests that this manuscript may have passed through the hands of the bookseller Giuseppe (Joseph) Martini of Lugano between 1913 and 1942, though it is not mentioned by Ferrari in her list of Cistercian manuscripts described in Martini s catalogues (Ferrari 1999, pp. 34-35). It was Martini who probably invented the myth of provenance from the library of the celebrated humanist Paolo Giovio (1483 - 1552) still recorded in the literature of some Italian Cistercian manuscripts (see Berkeley, University of California, Bancroft Library, MS UCB 16, in Digital Scriptorium).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BIBLE, Cistercian","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816133206351,"sku":"K56","price":250000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K56-3-1.jpg?v=1781795253"},{"product_id":"warwick-guy-de","title":"WARWICK, Guy de","description":"\u003cp\u003eA wonderful, most beautiful copy, with remarkable provenance, of this extraordinarily rare chivalric romance concerning the English knight Guy de Warwick, almost certainly the only surviving copy in private hands and one of three known copies; the other two are held at the Bibliotheque National de France (one of which is substantially damaged).This copy of this work epitomises all the elements of bibliophilic desirability; it is beautifully printed with wonderful illustration, it was exceptionally bound by the Royal binder for a group of the most discerning bibliophiles, it has exceptional royal provenance, and is of the utmost rarity. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The work was bound by Luc-Antoine Boyet (who would shortly after become the Royal binder in 1698) for a member of a very select group of bibliophiles known as  Les Curieux  made up of at least four members, Duvivier, Leriche, La Vieuville, and an as yet unidentified  Grand Curieux . Isabelle de Conihout and Pascal Ract-Madoux describe them in detail, for the first time as a group, in the  Reliures Francaises du XVII. Chefs-D Oeuvres du Mus ée Cond é  pp 64-110. The books bound for this group were exclusively important and extremely rare works in French or works translated into French and were bound by Luc-Antoine Boyet in what they describe as an  archa√Øsantes  style. The identical gilt shield with a date between 1695-6 (here Janvier 1696) occurs on many of these binding, see Conihout Ract-Madoux page 65 figure 1. The tools on this binding also correspond to those given by Conihout Ract-Madoux as those of Boyet s gilder, most notably the central fleuron on the spine (p. 110 figure 2) and the roll used on the inner dentelle p. (p. 110 figure A). These tool occur on the almost identically gilt spine of No. 26 in the catalogue which has the date 1695. Conihout Ract-Madoux suggest that the great bibliophile Jerome Duvivier was at the heart of this group of collectors and it is possible that this book was bound for him as he rarely signed his books, whereas the others in the group were prone to do so. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This volume then made its way into the library of Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, Comte de Toulouse, the youngest son of Louis XIV and his mistress Madame de Montespan. Louis Alexandre was created Count of Toulouse in 1681 at the time of his legitimation, and, in 1683, at the age of five, grand admiral. Though his father had legitimated him and his three surviving siblings, and even declared his two sons by Madame de Montespan fit to eventually succeed him to the throne of France, this was not to be, as immediately after Louis XIV's death the Parlement of Paris reversed the king's will. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Guy of Warwick is the English hero of a popular Romance in England and France from the 13th to 17th centuries. The story of Sir Guy is considered by scholars to be part of the romances of English heroes that form a loose corpus of Medieval literature that in general deals with the locations, characters and themes concerning England, English history, or English cultural mores, and shows some continuity between the poetry and myths of the pre-Norman or  Anglo-Saxon  era of English history as well as themes motifs and plots deriving from English folklore. Following tests of his skill and strength with dragons, monsters, giants, a great boar and the legendary Dun Cow, earning him the hand of his beloved, Guy comes to regret his violent past, and embarks on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, on his return, secludes himself in a hermitage in repentance. The chronicles of Thomas Rudborne and John Hardyng treat Guy as an historical figure (cf. Richmond 1996, ch. 4,5). Thus, like King Arthur and Robin Hood, Guy became a figure of legend, and the text became increasingly popular through the 18th and 19th centuries. The 25 fine woodcuts in this copy were either commissioned for this edition, or, as seems more likely from the fact their size makes them extend beyond the column widths, were designed to be used interchangeably in other chivalric works. They differ considerably in iconography, style and format from those of the Paris 1525 edition printed by Regnault \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A wonderful copy of this most rare and beautiful work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WARWICK, Guy de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816134418767,"sku":"K41","price":75000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/K41-5.jpg?v=1781795215"},{"product_id":"barbaro-daniello","title":"BARBARO, Daniello","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition, first issue ,of Barbaro s important treatise on perspective; it can also be composed of titles and colophons dated 1568 and 1569 in any combination, another variant has an elaborate woodcut title with no date. The Venetian Daniel Barbaro (1514-1570) advocated the use of the camera obscura as an aid to drawing and perspective, and this work contains one of the earliest descriptions of the use of a biconvex lens to assist artists in the representation of scenes from nature, bringing the device one step closer to the modern-day camera. The improvement in the image obtained with the device, as well as by adjusting the distance upon which the image is to be projected, was described by Barbaro. This work was one of the most respected texts on perspective in the sixteenth century, comparable to Durer s Manual. Designed for an audience of artists, architects, stage designers, etc., Barbaro's work is more mathematical than artistic. Its influence derived from the separation of perspective, used in the design of stage sets, from the graphic representation of buildings. It is partly based on the methods and writings of Piero della Francesca, but written in a more readable and humanistic style. The work is illustrated in part with a range of polyhedra, and it includes the earliest drawing of the truncated icosidodecahedron and it ties Jamnitzer for the earliest rhombicosidodecahedron. The work opens with a preparatory text on the principles of geometrical optics, the division of surfaces, the properties of triangles and the distinction between point at the level of the eye and the distance point. The sixth part is the account and the reduction of the diagram of Ptolomy's planisphere. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  The treatise on practical perspective by the Venetian humanist Daniele Barbaro was the first work of its type published in Italy. .. In his annotations on Vitruvius' treatise (1567), Barbaro had already devoted a long passage to the question. ... He learned perspective with the mathematician Giovanni Zamberti, the brother of Bartolomeo, the celebrated translator of Euclid. From contact with him, he became initiated into the questions of geometric optics which make up the starting point of his treatise. But he extends the universe of scientific reference considerably for problems of figurative standardization. The questions raised by Ptolemy's planisphere entered into debates on perspective in the second half of the 16th century, thanks to Federico Commandino's annotations (1558). ... Barbaro's treatise on perspective is the first text which attempted to bring together in a single book subject matter which until then had been dispersed in works from numerous, sometimes unrelated, disciplines, and of very different status. He expresses remarkable skill in reformulating speculations and giving them a function clearly and briefly. Thus Barbaro's treatise constitutes the first reduction in the art of perspective, a model which was to be traditional until the 19th century.  Pascal Dubourg-Glatigny. A crisp copy of this important and beautifully illustrated work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BARBARO, Daniello","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816136450383,"sku":"L2580","price":9750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_4099-copy.jpg?v=1781795207"},{"product_id":"caus-salomon-de","title":"CAUS, Salomon de","description":"\u003cp\u003eSecond edition, enlarged with extra plates, of this beautiful and extravagantly illustrated volume of ingenious hydraulic solutions to engineering problems produced by the Huguenot architect, inventor, garden designer and engineer, Salomon de Caus. The work deals with the physics of movement, with a range of technical applications, encompassing fields as diverse as energy, gardening and music. Book I describes the first machines to be operated by solar power, powered by sunlight striking closed air reservoirs, and one of the earliest uses of steam power. Scholars have proposed that De Caus as an early re-discoverer, or post-Classical inventor, of the principle of steam being used as a propelling force. He was deeply interested in garden design, mechanical fountains and speaking statues, and worked in the service of several great Renaissance princes. His masterpiece was the spectacular garden known as the  Hortus Palatinus  at Frederick s palace at Heidelberg.  He applied himself at an early age to the study of the mathematical sciences, his favourite writers being Archimedes, Euclid, and Vitruvius. After a visit to Italy he came to England as mathematical tutor to Henry, prince of Wales, and in 1612 published a work entitled  La Perspective avec la raison des ombres et Miroirs ; in the dedication of this work to that prince, dated at Richmond, 1 Oct. 1611, he states that he has been two or three years in the service of his royal highness. He seems also to have been employed as drawing-master to the Princess Elizabeth. After the death of the young Prince of Wales, De Caus was, in 1613, employed by the elector palatine, Frederick V, then recently married to the Princess Elizabeth, to lay out the gardens at the castle of Heidelberg . While at Heidelberg De Caus published in 1615  Institution Harmonique, ..  In the dedication of this work to Anne, queen of Great Britain, dated 15 Sept. 1614, he says that his experiments in the mechanical powers of water were commenced while in the service of the late Prince of Wales. In the same year, 1615, he published his most important work,  Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes avec diverses Machines.  This work is divided into three parts, all copiously illustrated: I.  Les Th éorèmes et Problèmes des Forces Mouvantes;  II.  Des Grotes et Fontaines pour l ornement des Maisons de Plaisance et Jardins;  III.  De la Fabrique des Orgues.  The second part contains, as he himself says in the dedication to Princess Elizabeth, many designs formerly made at Richmond for the adornment of the palace, or the entertainment of his master, the Prince of Wales. In the first part occur his enunciations of the theorems of the expansion and condensation of steam, and of the elevation of water by the application of heat, which have gained for him in some quarters the honour of being the first inventor of the steam engine, though De Caus seems only to have utilised them for fountains and other waterworks and claims no originality. It is almost certain that Edward Somerset, second marquis of Worcester, to whom this honour has also been ascribed, and later engineers, knew and developed the principles enunciated by De Caus.  DNB. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A very good copy in a handsome and well preserved contemporary English binding from the famous Hopetoun library, sold in 1889 by the 7th Earl of Hopetoun (see De Ricci, English Collectors, p. 164).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"CAUS, Salomon de","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816137236815,"sku":"K108","price":15000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/titlepage_0c16b018-e0db-4ee3-8d7a-2c85b7fb1d51.png?v=1781795202"},{"product_id":"revese-bruto-ottavio","title":"REVESE BRUTO, Ottavio","description":"\u003cp\u003eFirst and only edition of Ottavio Revese Bruto s (Brendola 1585-1648) architectural textbook, which shows how to make and use an  archisesto . The  archisesto  is a proportional compass invented by the author, who based his invention on Galileo Galilei s geometrical and military compass, the sector. The name  archisesto  comes from the words  archi[tettura]  and  sesto  (compass). This work is a  do-it-yourself  aid for architects; the tool became quite popular between C17th and C18th, especially in Britain, where it was known as the architectonic sector. A nobleman from the area of Vicenza, Revese Bruto was educated at the prestigious Accademia Olimpica, where he had the opportunity to study the legacy of some of the greatest Italian architects of the Renaissance, such as Andrea Palladio, Sebastiano Serlio, and Vincenzo Scamozzi. To mention but one, the triumphal arch of Campo Marzo (destroyed in 1938) was among his most important achievements, and his 1620 s fine engraving of the stage of the Teatro Olimpico became soon a widespread and well-known illustration of the most celebrated theatre of Vicenza. His interests spanned from theatrical art to the technique of perspective. He is given as the author of treatises on these subjects, even though Archisesto appears to be his only published work. As the title has it, the architectonic sector s aim is to facilitate the mathematics behind the design of the five orders of architecture: the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Composite, and the Corinthian. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The book is divided in five sections which focus on these styles, and it is strongly informed by earlier paramount works on Classical architecture and proportion (above all, Vignola 1562; Palladio 1570). Revese Bruto illustrates how to design arches, architraves, columns, pedestals, capitals and balustrades according to the canons of each one of the five orders. His addressee is Federico Cornaro, Bishop of Vicenza, who is praised in verse at the beginning. It is known that Cornaro commissioned the re-styling of the façade of the Vicenza bishop s palace to Revese Bruto in the same period in which Archisesto was published. The five sections are preceded by the advice to the reader. Instructions on how to make an architectonic sector follow, together with the folding plate that illustrates its components. In the advice, the author states that the design of ornaments has always been the most delightful part of his profession. However, he knows the decoration of buildings is no easy task, since the attainment of right proportions often requires complex calculations. His architectonic sector offers a shortcut in this respect, making the burden of mathematics lighter. Revese Bruto s only regret, he confesses, is not to have succeeded in showing how to divide the lines of the arch. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n In addition to the practitioners of architecture, the author makes clear that anybody dealing with geometry, arithmetic, and music, will benefit from the use of this multifunctional object. Not only will his  scherzo matematico  (mathematical joke) help one to design archways and divide the lines of the arcade, but also it will allow the architect to plan  temples, theatres, amphitheatres, circles, towers, pyramids, colossai, mausoleums, and so on.  Most interestingly, Revese Bruto instructs the reader on how to build an architectonic sector. By cutting the components out of the large folding plate, and gluing them on either card board or plywood, one can start to assemble a model of the tool, which however is way longer and more complicated a process. Revese Bruto explains it in detail, advising on materials to use, such as German brass foil, without neglecting the entrepreneurial aspect of his invention. He leaves the reader suggesting the purchase of a good metal architectonic sector in Padua s Piazza della Signoria at the shop premises of the craftsman Aquilin Serena Giovine.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"REVESE BRUTO, Ottavio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816137498959,"sku":"L2657d","price":10500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot-AB.webp?v=1781795198"},{"product_id":"walther-johann","title":"WALTHER, Johann","description":"\u003cp\u003eCrisp copy of a German poem written to commemorate the death of Martin Luther in 1546, when the volume was first printed in five impressions (no priority has been established). Johann Walther (or Walter) (1496 1570), the  father of Lutheran church music , was composer and then director of the chapel choir of Frederick III, Duke of Saxony. In 1524, he published  Geistliches Gesangbuechleinin , a hymnal for Lutheran choirs, with a foreword by Martin Luther himself; the  Deutsche Messe  followed in 1527. For two decades, Walther worked incessantly with Luther to adapt Catholic church music to the needs of Lutheran liturgy, for instance, by introducing hymns into the mass and encouraging people to sing them at home and make them part of their everyday lives. The  Epitaphium  is Walther s tribute to a religious personality who had also become a close friend. The poem depicts Luther as a heroic figure whom Death cannot overpower and the Devil s bite cannot hurt, a soul who has escaped from the hellish torments reserved to Papists to revive in the teachings of God s word and the light of Christ. The fine woodcuts after Lucas Cranach the Younger immortalise Luther and Frederick III, one of the earliest defenders of Lutheranism and founder of the University of Wittenberg, where Luther taught. \u003cbr\u003e\n \u003cbr\u003e\n  The striking binding is made of two non-sequential leaves from the same manuscript in superb condition. It is probably a C15 German lectionary, with excerpts from the Acts of the Saints and Martyrs, associated with their calendar dates of worship. The front cover features passages from the acts of St Mathias (February 24) and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (March 10), while on the back are extracts from the lives of St Peter and Paul (including Acts 1:21-26 and 12:2-8), interspersed with orations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WALTHER, Johann","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138580303,"sku":"L2748","price":4950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/frontcover_2d4127df-f89c-4889-9c1d-2abc3a65732f.png?v=1781795192"},{"product_id":"book-of-hours-6","title":"BOOK OF HOURS","description":"\u003cp\u003eExtremely rare, finely printed and beautifully illuminated book of hours, finely printed on good quality vellum with the cuts beautifully illuminated in gold and colour in a rectangular format. The illuminator has not simply coloured the cuts beneath but has freely painted over them or extended the painting of the figures beyond the original borders. Books of hours were used by individuals at home rather than in church. A calendar was attached to the front so that memorial days of the saints could be identified. They were typically structured around the hourly prayers observed in monasteries and Catholics would recite the appropriate liturgy eight times a day. These books served as symbols of status and were often luxurious items, gifts given on important occasions. An important point to notice in connection with the illustrations of French  Books of Hours  at this time is that they are nearly all inspired by German artists and nearly all copied from illuminated MSS.  Joseph Cundall.  A Brief History of Wood engraving.  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The Hardouin s workshop dominated the market of printed books of hours, in Paris between 1510 and 1550. Gillet Hardouin worked primarily as a printer, between 1500 and 1542, and German Hardouin was registered in the Guild of Illuminators. They were the only editors capable of both printing and illumination without commissioning other professionals. They often used fine, densely ornamented metal cut borders, however they had gone out of fashion by the time this vol was produced, which gives this volume a much cleaner and clearer style. Here borders have been added but have been freely painted in the margins over gilt grounds. The quality of their work is remarkable. It seems that they produced books of hours in various formats, from ordinary copies printed on paper to those printed on vellum with woodcuts and the most luxurious where the entire book was illuminated over the original cuts, most often on commission for a specific client. The addition in the final quire of the Hours of St Jerome by Giovanni Andrea Bishop of Aleria is interesting and unusual. Lacombe points out that it is difficult to understand why this volume, apparently printed in 1533, contains a calendar dating from 1520-32, though does not suggest that it was printed at an earlier date. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Georg Friedrich von Greiffenklau zu Vollrads was born in Schloss Vollrads on 8 September 1573. He was educated at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome. In 1616, the cathedral chapter of Worms Cathedral elected him to be Bishop of Worms and then elected him to be Archbishop of Mainz in 1626. As Archchancellor of the Holy Roman Empire, Georg Friedrich authored the Edict of Restitution in 1627. The Archbishop of Mainz was an influential ecclesiastic and secular prince in the Holy Roman Empire and was the primas Germaniae, the substitute for the Pope north of the Alps. Aside from Rome, the See of Mainz is the only other see referred to as a \"Holy See . The beautiful velvet  treasure  binding could well have been made for him as befitting someone of his status in the Church. A very beautiful and luxurious book of hours, exceptionally well preserved.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOOK OF HOURS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138645839,"sku":"K98","price":38750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_8091.jpg?v=1781795190"},{"product_id":"book-of-hours-7","title":"BOOK OF HOURS","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe volume comprises: a Calendar (fol. 1r); the Hours of the Cross (fol. 7r); the Hours of the Holy Spirit (fol. 13r); a mass for the Virgin (fol. 16v), followed by the Passion Readings, the Obsecro te (fol. 23v) and O intemerata (fol. 25v); Suffrages to the Saints (fol. 27v); the Hours of the Virgin (fol. 52r), followed by variations for the Church year; the Seven Penitential Psalms (fol. 83r) followed by a Litany; the Office of the Dead (fol. 96r) and prayers. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The large miniatures are: 1. The Crucifixion; 2. Pentecost with the Virgin seated with her back to us gazing to heaven out of an archway, surrounded by followers; 3. The Annunciation to the Virgin, in which she kneels in her bower before her prie-deu with a closed book in a green binding; 4. The Nativity, with the Virgin and Joseph either side of an angel adoring the Child in a grassy area before the stable; 5. The Adoration of the Magi; 6. The Presentation in the Temple; 7. The Massacre of the Innocents; 8. The Flight into Egypt; 9. King David kneeling at a window and beholding God in the heavens; 9. A Funeral, with priests and hooded mourners.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOOK OF HOURS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138842447,"sku":"K57","price":65000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_8058.jpg?v=1781795190"},{"product_id":"portable-breviary-and-psalter-for-roman-use","title":"PORTABLE BREVIARY AND PSALTER FOR ROMAN USE","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis rare and charming volume includes a Temporal Breviary and Liturgical Psalter, i.e. service books used in the daily offices, both for the use of Rome. The Proprium de tempore (fols 8r-190r) provides the liturgy for the celebration of the Divine Office from the first Sunday of Advent according to the rite of the Roman Curia, with no further specification but for the inclusion in the litany (fols 74v-77r) of Zenobius, bishop of Florence, among the confessors, and of the Franciscan saints Francis, Clare and Elisabeth among monks and virgins respectively. It is dated 12 February 1447 and preceded by a table of rubrics (fols 1v-7r). The Liturgical Psalter (fols 192r-268r) supplies hymns, canticles, antiphones, versicles and responses according to the Cursus Romanus of the liturgy of the Hours and it is datable to the third quarter of the 15th century. The Temporal and the Liturgical Psalter were copied by two different scribes and at different times, with the Psalter probably dating to the early 1460s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNevertheless, the pen-flourished decoration of the minor initials and the beautiful illumination of the borders and major initials are consistent throughout the book and seemingly belong to the same decorative campaign, datable to the 1460s or early 1470s. The illumination was executed by an eclectic anonymous artist who was strongly influenced by the style of earlier and contemporary illumination from Lombardy in Northern Italy as suggested by the illuminated borders on fols 8r and 192r and the portrait initials on fols 8r and 192v (see A. De Floriani, “La miniatura in Liguria nella seconda metà del Quattrocento: un bilancio provvisorio”).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA connection with Northern Italy, and more specifically Liguria, is also suggested by the escutcheon in the bas-de-page and the depiction of a peacock in the border of the first page of the Breviary (fol. 8r), respectively identifiable as the arms and the emblem of the Cybos, a patrician family of Genoa. The nature of the text (a breviary for members of regular and secular clergy) and the cross above the shield, indicates an ecclesiastic of high status as the original owner. Two members of the Cybo family were created bishops and cardinals in the second half of the fifteenth century: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cybo (1432-1492) bishop of Savona (1466-1472) and Molfetta (1472-1484), and his young cousin Cardinal Lorenzo Cybo de Mari (1450\/1-1503), archbishop of Benevento (1485-1503). As the cross above the arms shows the single horizontal limb of an episcopal cross, rather than the double traverse of the archiepiscopal one, the owner was Giovanni Battista Cybo before his election to the papacy as Pope Innocent VIII on 29 August 1484.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn November 1466 Giovanni Battista was made bishop of Savona, a town to the west of Genoa in the region of Liguria in Northern Italy; at the time under the government of the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza. These political circumstances favoured the arrival in Liguria of artists from Lombardy who imported new models and a more sophisticated artistic style to provincial Liguria. It is therefore conceivable that the two texts, the Temporal Breviary and the Liturgical Psalter, were brought together, decorated and assembled in a single volume in Liguria (Savona or Genoa) as a gift to Cybo as Bishop of Savona. Through the depiction of Cybo’s peacock and of the partridge and white rabbits in the margins of the opening of the Temporal Breviary, the decoration of the book seems to bestow upon the bishop a life of splendour, wisdom and knowledge, purity and truth, resurrection and ultimately immortality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis high quality manuscript for Cybo’s private devotion and therefore after his death probably remained in the possession of his family, whereas books belonging to him as pontiff were kept in the papal library (now the Vatican Library). The volume was certainly in use after the pope’s death as an unprofessional hand added two notes relating to the death of Innocent VIII and the election of his successor Alexander Borgia in August 1492 to fol. 272v. It was possibly passed on to the pope’s cousin Cardinal Lorenzo Cybo de Mari, who had the pope’s tomb in the Vatican basilica completed by the leading painter and sculptor Antonio del Pollaiuolo in 1498 and his body buried in the bronze monument on January 1498. It is worth noting that the pope’s arms on the tomb are identical to those found in this book [see A. Wright, The Pollaiuolo brothers: the arts of Florence and Rome, New Haven, 2005, chapter XIII].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs the book is not listed in the inventory of the books bequeathed by Cardinal Lorenzo to the Cathedral of Benevento (see A. Zaro, “L’Inventario dei libri antichi della Biblioteca Capitolare di Benevento”, Samnium, viii (1935), pp. 5-25, in particular pp. 23-5), it is probable that it was passed on as a prized possession to other members of the Cybo family, including Cardinal Innocenzo Cybo (1491-1550), the grandson of Innocent VIII, appointed as cardinal by his uncle Leo X in 1513, and Cardinals Alderano (1613-1700) and Camillo (1681-1743).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PORTABLE BREVIARY AND PSALTER FOR ROMAN USE","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138875215,"sku":"K4","price":45950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_7972.jpg?v=1781795189"},{"product_id":"psalter","title":"PSALTER","description":"\u003cp\u003eText and Illumination: The volume comprises Psalms 15-150, followed by the Magnificat, a Litany and other prayers. The initials here compare well with the refined works of this region in the last decades of the thirteenth century (such as the Psalter for the use of Ghent, mid-thirteenth century, now Getty MS. 14; 85.MK.239, and the Bestiary from Flanders, c. 1270, now Getty, MS. Ludwig XV 3;83.MR.173: see Kren, Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands, pp. 40 and 44-6; and the Bute Psalter, made north east France c. 1270, now Getty MS. 46;92.MK.92: see same series for French manuscripts, pp. 31-32), and sets it well above the more commonly found rustic examples. The historiated initials contain: 1. fol. 30v, David as a crowned king with a long staff, touching his eyes as God blesses him (opening  Dominus illuminatio mea ... , Psalm 26); 2. fol. 50r, God appearing from a cloud and blessing an enthroned David (opening  Dixi custodiam vias ... , Psalm 39); 3. fol. 67v, David brandishing a sword before a Jewish religious leader, probably representing Ahimelech to whom the text is addressed (opening  Quid gloriaris in ... , Psalm 51); 4. fol. 68v, King David standing before a fool representative of those  who work iniquity, who have devoured my people like a loaf of bread , who holds a staff and bites from a circular piece of bread (opening  Dixit insipiens in ... , Psalm 52); 5. fol. 86v, Christ and David in different compartments of an initial, with Christ blessing while David is half-submurged in water (opening  Salvum me fac ... , Psalm 68); 6. fol. 109v, David with a stick ringing the bells hanging from a stone church (opening  E[xultate] deo nostro ... , Psalm 80); 7. Fol. 130r, three tonsured monks singing from a book on a lectern (opening  Cantate domino canticum ... , Psalm 97); 8. fol. 133r, David in prayer on the Mount of Olives (opening  Domine exaudi orationem ... , Psalm 101); 9. fol. 153v, the Crucifixion, with God the Father holding Christ on the Cross (opening  Dixit dominus ... , Psalm 109).   An elegant and high quality psalter   rare.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"PSALTER","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816138940751,"sku":"K50","price":125000.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/1_41047cf4-e7a1-46b2-b778-a39551b09177.jpg?v=1781795190"},{"product_id":"markham-gervase","title":"MARKHAM, Gervase","description":"\u003cp\u003eFourth edition  revised, corrected, and amended, together with many new additions,  of this important and innovative agricultural work by Markham, on the preparation and improvement of soils and on arable farming generally.  Soil husbandry began to be seen as the key to productive, profitable farming. Gervase Markham, one of the first agricultural writers to write in English instead of Latin, described soils as various mixtures of clay, sand, and gravel. What made good soil depended on the local climate, the character and condition of the soil, and the local plants (crops).  Simple Clays, Sands, or Gravels together; may be all good, and all fit to bring forth increase, or all   barren.  Understanding the soil was the key to understanding what would grow best, and essential to keeping a farm productive.  Thus having a true knowledge of the Nature and Condition of your ground . it may not only be purged and clensed   but also so much bettered and refined.  Prescribing steps to improve British farms, Markham recommended using the right type of plow for the ground. He advised mixing river sand and crushed burned limestone into the soil, to be followed by the best manure to be had, preferably ox, cow, or horse dung. In describing procedures for improving barren soils, Markham advocated growing wheat or rye for two years in a field, and then letting sheep graze and manure it for a year. After the sheep, several crops of barley were to be followed in the seventh year by peas or beans, and then several more years as pasture. After this cycle the ground would be much improved for growing grain. The key to sustaining soil fertility was to alternate livestock and crops on the same piece of ground. Equally important, although it received less attention, was preventing erosion of the soil itself. Markham advised plowing carefully to avoid collecting water into erosive gullies. Good soil was the key to a good farm, and keeping soil on the farm required special effort even on England s gentle rolling hills.  David R. Montgomery.  Dirt. The Erosion of Civilizations  The work also deals with the preservation of grains and pulses, including a section on the best grain to take to sea (which he concludes is rice). It also contains two chapters at the end on the husbandry of cattle for plowing. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Many books on agriculture and gardening were published during the century, but from the historical point of view the most important are those of Markham, because they appeared at an early stage in the new development, were widely read, and full of useful information and sound advice. Markham was a too prolific writer, but one can forgive his constant repetition and shameless re-issuing of unsold books under a new title for the great influence his writings had on English agriculture. His most important work was  Markhams farewell to husbandry.  It dealt fully and expertly not only with ploughing, sowing and harvesting, but with methods such as sanding, lining, marling and manuring, by which fertility of land could be increased.  Anne Wilbraham  The Englishman s Food: Five Centuries of English Diet .\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MARKHAM, Gervase","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816139104591,"sku":"L2675","price":1750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2675.jpg?v=1781795189"},{"product_id":"lawson-william","title":"LAWSON, William","description":"Fourth edition, slightly enlarged from the previous, of this beautifully illustrated work on gardening, the only published work of William Lawson, all early editions of which are now rare. Little is known of Lawson s life apart from what he tells us in the preface   that he has 48 years and more experience of furnishing his northern orchard and country garden  with needfull plants and usefull herbs . The work is dedicated to Sir Henry Belosses of a well known Yorkshire family who appears to have been a neighbour of the author and shared his keen horticultural interest and tastes.\r \r Lawson claims no authority for his work other than his own observation and experience;  my meer and sole experience, without respect to any former-written Treatise , but he was obviously sensible, educated and well read.  A man of some learning, he evidently read widely on agriculture and gardening, and his two works are also scattered with references to the classics. When he died he willed  all my latine books \u0026amp; mie English books of contraversie  to his son William, which suggests that he may well have owned a relatively substantial library of books for the period.  Julie Gardham   Glasgow University Library Special collections. Within a small compass he provides sound instruction for  planting, grafting as to make any ground good, for a rich Orchard  particularly in the north.  Occasionally in the text he refers to the difficulties of this environment. He advises his fellow northerners, for instance, to  meddle not with Apricockes nor Peaches, nor scarcely with Quinces, which will not like our cold parts . This book can therefore be credited with being the first to deal with the northern garden.  Julie Gardham. This followed by similar information on  herbes of common use, their virtues, seasons, profits, ornaments, variety of knots, models for trees, and plots for the best ordering of Grounds and walks , together with the  Husbandry of Bees .  The work goes on to deal comprehensively with all aspects of orchard management, covering: the kind of soil required ( blacke, fat, mellow, cleane and well tempered ) and how to improve it; the best kind of site and how to protect it with fencing, or even better,  quickwood, and moates or ditches of water ; how to deal with  annoyances  such as animals, birds, thieves, disease and the weather (not to mention the evils of a  carelesse master ); how to plant, space and prune your trees; the different types of fruit trees and bushes and their qualities; and how to gather, store and preserve the fruits of your labours. As Lawson sums up,  skill and pains, bring fruitful gains .  Julie Gardham. The section entitled  the County Houswife s Garden  is valuable for its attention to the essential role of women in the rural household, as cooks, nurturers of fine flowers and keepers of the herbal medicine cupboard. Also Appended to this edition, is Simon Harwood s short treatise on the art of propagating plants and another, which may be by Lawson or Harwood, on how to increase the yield from a wide selection of fruits. A simple practical work written with much charm by an obvious enthusiast and still eminently readable.","brand":"LAWSON, William","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816139137359,"sku":"L2578a","price":6500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-11.31.24.webp?v=1781795188"},{"product_id":"muller-heinrich-ed-with-herberstein-sigmund-von","title":"[MÜLLER, HEINRICH, ed. [with] HERBERSTEIN, Sigmund von.","description":"\u003cp\u003eA finely illustrated sammelband of uncommon German ethnographic surveys of Muscovy and the Ottoman territories. I) Translated and edited by Heinrich Müller,  Türckische Historien  is an adaptation of influential contemporary works on the Ottomans. The first part is based on the Italian version of the  Palinodia de los Turcos  by Vasco D√≠az Tanco de Fregenal (c.1490-c.1573), a Spanish humanist and polymath. It is a compendium of the history of the Turks inspired by Paolo Giovio s renowned  Commentario de le cose de  Turchi  (Rome, 1532). Like traditional ethnographic accounts, it employs anecdotes and vivid episodes to enrich historical events, spanning the origins of the Turks and the war between Selim III, Charles V and the Serenissima. Unlike its source, this translation is handsomely illustrated with portraits of Ottoman Sultans. The second part, which bears a separate t-p and the date 1565, is based on  I cinque libri della legge, religione, et vita de  Turchi  (Venice and Florence, 1548) by Giovan Antonio Menavino (b. 1492). It is an account of the time Menavino spent at the court of the Sultan of Constantinople after being captured by the Turks aboard a ship, and contains a wealth of information on Turkish customs, laws, religion, institutions, and army, including observations on temples, burials, and  hospitals  for the relief of pilgrims, travellers, the poor and sick. The third part, with a separate t-p and the date 1563, is an edition of  Ursachen des Türkenkriegs  (Strasbourg, 1558) by Johannes Aventinus (Johann Georg Turmair) (1477-1534), a German historian and philologist. Aventinus analyses the religious, political and military causes of the Turkish wars, adding that the papal crusades had corrupted the principles of a just war with the market of indulgences. II)  Moscoviter wunderbare Historien  is a translation of  Rerum Moscovitarum Commentarii  (1549) by the historian and diplomat Sigmund von Herberstein (1486-1566). Written between 1517 and 1527, it relies heavily on Herberstein s personal experience and interactions with Russian people, whose language he could speak. The woodcuts and maps are in excellent condition; this is one of the earliest illustrations of the use of skis. The maps depict the topography of Muscovy, from its boundary with Livonia to Siberia, its physical conformation, rivers, lakes, and vegetation, and the first modern plan of the city of Moscow. They are elegantly engraved and in such fine detail that individual features and buildings are easily identifiable.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"[MÜLLER, HEINRICH, ed. [with] HERBERSTEIN, Sigmund von.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141267279,"sku":"L2769","price":13750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/muller.jpg?v=1781795177"},{"product_id":"branca-giovanni","title":"BRANCA, Giovanni","description":"\u003cp\u003eA good, crisp copy of the first edition of Giovanni Branca s finely illustrated work on machines. An Italian architect and engineer, Branca (1571-1645) worked for many years for the Basilica of Loreto, where he supervised restoration, repairs and the construction of funeral monuments. Following the textual genre of the  theatres of machines  which had developed in the C16,  Le machine  showcases his knowledge of mechanical instruments, some of which he also built himself. In the preface, Branca explains that the work features the physical principles discussed by Aristotle, which, when applied to machines, can generate all possible kinds of mechanical movement. The handsome, realistic illustrations of the 63 machines are introduced by brief commentaries which combine the abstraction of physics and geometrical description with potential practical purposes for each. These include grinding wheat or gunpowder, flattening metals, making coins and medals, and drawing water from a well. Whilst most of Branca s machines were propelled by human, animal or hydraulic force, Plate 25 famously illustrates a machine which, like several others, was designed to grind materials, but  with a wondrous engine  an iron head on top of a metal bust filled with water and resting on burning coals; this would generate from the mouth a hot,  violent breath  strong enough to spin a paddled wheel. Although the machine remained closer to the principles of the classical  aeolipile , a steam turbine described by Hero of Alexandria c.1AD and later reprised by Vitruvius, this was the first modern reference in print to potential practical applications of a steam-driven engine. With Leonardo da Vinci, the Turkish engineer Taqi Al-Din and the Englishman John Wilkins, Branca contributed to the theoretical promulgation of the idea of a steam machine in the early C18, when Thomas Newcomen reconceptualised it into the model for the functional steam engine which changed history. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n This copy belonged to Charles L. Clarke (1853-1941), a close colleague of Thomas Edison and first president of the Edison Electric Company. His collage of notes on this work include passages from technical books like  The Descriptive History of the Steam Engine  (1831).\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BRANCA, Giovanni","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816141824335,"sku":"L2728","price":8500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/L2728-4.jpg?v=1781795173"},{"product_id":"virdung-von-hassfurt-johannes","title":"VIRDUNG VON HASSFURT, Johannes.","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn important collection of works on astrological medicine united in this edition for the first time by the Italian scholar Giovanni Paolo Gallucci (1538-1621), including: the treatise in 4 books by Johann Virdung (ca.1465-ca.1535), published in 1532; the  Iatromathematica  attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; the  Prognostica  by Imbrasius of Ephesus (pseudo Galen); and  De triplici vita  in 3 books ( De vita sana ,  De vita longa ,  De vita coelitus comparanda ), with an early treatise on the plague ( Epidemiarum antidotus ), both by the Florentine philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1422-1499), and the  Introductio ad astrologiam  by Gallucci himself. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Gallucci was a translator and cartographer. After completing his education in Padua, he moved to Venice. His interests ranged from astronomy to medicine and literature. He was one of the founders of the second Venetian Academy and wrote several works on astronomy, such as the important star atlas  Theatrum mundi, et temporis  (1588). Virdung was an influential physician and astrologer from Hasfurt. He studied in Leipzig and Krakow where he attended the lectures of Albertus de Brudzewo and Johannes von Glogau. In 1492 Virdung moved to Heidelberg where taught medicine, mathematics and astronomy and entered the service of the Electoral Palatine court, producing yearly prognostications regarding the ruling planets, the interpretation of eclipses and natural disasters, as well as social events (Joachimite prophecies). Virdung s bibliography includes at least 80 astrological works in German and Latin. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n After a dedicatory letter by Gallucci to the Bishop of Mantua, Sisto Vicedomini, explaining the relationship between disease and the influence of the stars over human bodies, the volume opens with Virdung s 4 books, each introduced by a short summary. Book 1 focuses on the basics of astrology (zodiac, stars, planets and other celestial bodies, such as the Moon), according to principles by Galen, Ptolemy (Opus Quadripartitum) and Cardan. Book 2 and 3 concern the classification of diseases and their remedies (drugs  ingredients; laxative and phlebotomy; bandages, embrocation and balms to relieve pain; poultice for the head and the stomach, infusions). They particularly deal with the definition of vomit and faeces as movements of the body to expel poison and humours, as well as with the issue of the periods of major danger for the health, for instance the moon phases. Book 4 discusses symptoms and features of the body which reveal specific diseases depending on the position of the stars, such as face appearance and the colour of urine. There follows the  Iatromathematica , supposedly by the Egyptian philosopher Hermes Trismegistus, a treatise in Latin translation which refers to medical astrology as a discipline subordinating clinical observation and therapeutic praxis to the scrutiny of the stars; the  Prognostica  or  De decubitu  in 13 chapters, an anonymous work on prognosis bringing together materials from the Galenic  Crises , as well as from the iatromathematical tradition. The second part of the volume contains Ficino s  De triplice vita , preceded by Gallucci s address to the reader. One of Ficino s later works, inspired by Galen, Plato and the Arab  Picatrix , and divided into three parts:  De vita sana , dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, aiming at helping scholars achieve a healthy life through suitable diet and habits;  De vita longa , dedicated to the noble Florentine Filippo Valori, on eternal happiness, providing similar advice to the elderly;  De vita coelitus comparanda , prescribing gold and gems (talismans) as powerful health remedies. Last, a short astrological treatise by Gallucci dealing with celestial phenomena and related calculations, zodiac and planets, connection between stars and Fortune, and their influences on the bodies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"VIRDUNG VON HASSFURT, Johannes.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816144249167,"sku":"L2353","price":4950.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/Screenshot-2024-08-06-at-14.33.54.webp?v=1781794953"},{"product_id":"puckle-james","title":"PUCKLE, James","description":"James Puckle (1667?-1724) published this collection of \"characters\" in 1711 which ran to several editions until the mid-Nineteenth century. A microcosmography in the Theophrastian sense with an enormous popularity in England. This de-luxe edition with wooden engravings by John Thompson, Branston, Besbit and other Bewick pupils after the designs by Thurston totalled only 735 copies and was printed by John Johnson, the master-printer and later author of \"Typographia\" (1824) right after he had left the Lee Priory Press; the style of his Puckle's Club very much resembles the Lee Priory imprints. This volume also contains the debut as a book illustrator of William Harvey (p.56), who had just left Thomas Bewick, his master, to become the pupil of Haydon, the painter, in London. Chatto \u0026amp; Jackson (p632) are of the opinion that several of the wooden engravings by John Thompson for this volume are \"indisputably the best among the very many excellent cuts which have been engraved in England within the last twenty years\".","brand":"PUCKLE, James","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816144675151,"sku":"X73","price":175.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/X73-Puckle-1_burned.jpg?v=1781794950"},{"product_id":"zonca-vittorio","title":"ZONCA, Vittorio","description":"\u003cp\u003eRare first edition of Vittorio Zonca's wonderful, inventive and most influential work, one of the classic books on machinery of the late Italian Renaissance, beautifully illustrated with forty two engraved plates depicting machines for use in paper making, printing, flour mills, silk spinning, and a speculative machine using 'perpetual motion', amongst many others. The dedication is by the printer Bertelli to Rainuccio Gambara. Little is known about Zonca (1568-1602) beyond this his major publication which describes him as 'Architect of the Commune of Padua'; it is evident from this work that he was practically involved with a wide range of disciplines, from hydraulics, to textiles, to printing. Zonca clearly takes his place along with Ramelli, Vrani, and Branca as one of the pre-eminent engineers of late C16 Italy, all of whom share a debt to Leonardo. The work is simply conceived with a detailed plate of each machine, a table of its parts, and a lengthy practical description detailing its function. Nearly all the machines from the  Novo Teatro  focus on water power, though some use humans or animals. Of particular interest are those relating to the manufacture of silk and other fabrics, to the printing press and the manufacture of paper and the operation of canals. He describes the application of the rolling mill to precious and other metals and Zonca appears to be the first engineer to remark that when running against steel any sort of metal other than brass is consumed. He depicts for the first time a set of water driven stampers used in the fabrication of paper pulp, a full description of a printing press with all its parts, and a press for printing engravings, such as in this work. He also describes various 'filotoio' or silk weaving machines that were very much ahead of their time. It was not for another hundred years that such machines made their way to England through the auspices of the eighteenth-century industrial spy John Lombe. There are also two interesting machines used for cooking or roasting meat that harness the power of the upward draft of air in the chimney to power a spit. One that stands out is a water pump in which Zonca shows a huge pipe for raising water working as a siphon that  would effectively create a machine working in perpetual motion driving a mill-wheel for grinding grain. The idea of a continuous power supply for operating machines was clearly a significant part of Zonca's research. Some of the engravings, monogramed FV, are by Francis Valesio, others monogramed, Ben W sc, are by Benjamin Wright, some still unidentified have the monogram AH or AHI or AI. The work enjoyed great success, even being translated into Chinese in 1627 by Johannes Schreck to show off the wonderful machines of the west. A very good copy of a beautifully illustrated work, with an intriguing early British provenance. Unfortunately we have not been able to identify the Buchan of the title but the work was undoubtedly bound in Britain, perhaps Scotland, at an early date. This copy has a slightly different collation to others in that it has an extra two leaves in quire L, though it has the same number of plates.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ZONCA, Vittorio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816145330511,"sku":"L2276","price":11500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_1880.jpg?v=1781794949"},{"product_id":"book-of-hours-9","title":"BOOK OF HOURS","description":"\u003cp\u003eText: \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The volume contains a Calendar (fol. 1r); the Passion readings from the Gospel of John (fol. 7r) and prayers including the  Egressus est dominus   ,  Ave mundi spes maria    and  Saluto te sancta virgo   ; the Hours of the Virgin (fol. 14r), with Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, Nones, Vespers and Compline; the Seven Penitential Psalms (fol. 30r) followed by a Litany; the Office of the Dead (fol. 40r; Use of Angers) followed by prayers and suffrages to saints. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Illumination: \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n The single miniature in this volume is that of the Annunciation to the Virgin, in which the high dome-like heads of the figures, as well as their ivory-white skin-tones and the close composition of the scene, show the strong influence of the royal court artist Jean Bourdichon (1457\/49-1521), whose style dominated the art of the northern French elites throughout the first half of the sixteenth century. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n What is remarkable here, and unlike most other Books of Hours, is the influence of French Renaissance decoration in the larger initials and script which would be more at home in a grand illuminated text manuscript (cf. the contemporary Haimo of Auxerre, Expositio in epistolas Pauli, made for Jean Bud é, royal secretary: sold in Sotheby s, 29 June 2007, lot 37, then Les Enluminures, cat. 15, France 1500, no.16). This opulent art style was brought to France by François Ier from Italy, and popularised by his court as part of a programme to plant  une nouvelle Rome  on French soil. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Provenance: \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n 1. Written and illuminated in High-Renaissance style during the period in which the extravagant patronage of François Ier and his court established the French Renaissance as an art movement in itself. The commissioner was from Angers in Central France (both uses of Hours of the Virgin and Office of the Dead in that form), but the decoration, the presence of SS. Genevieve and Denis in red in the Calendar, and the history of the book, all suggest an origin in Paris. The last pages, originally blank, have sixteenth-century devotional material added to them as well as the apparent signature  De Nully (?) of that date. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n 2. Thence donated to the library of the royal Abbey of Saint-Antoine, Paris (also Saint-Antoine-des-Champs-lèz-Paris; see H. Bonnardot, L Abbaye royale de Saint-Antoine des Champs de l ordre de C√Æteaux 1882, and É. Rauni é,  Abbaye royale de Saint-Antoine-des-Champs , in Épitaphier du vieux Paris, 1890): their seventeenth- or eighteenth-century ownership inscriptions at head and sides of first leaf of Calendar,  Ex Libris Domus S. Antonii Parisiensis ; they also owned a thirteenth-century Gospel Book, now Paris, Bibliothèque de l Arsenal, MS. 613, but otherwise books from their library appear to be rare. The absence of St. Anthony suggests that the book was made for a patron outside of this community and then given to it later. The abbey was founded by the mid-twelfth century as a community of Cistercian women, following preaching by the reformer Foulques de Neuilly at a chapel dedicated to St. Anthony just outside the eastern gate of Paris   the present suburb of the city named Faubourg St Antoine grew up around them and is based on their estates. The house came under royal protection and enjoyed the patronage of wealthy citizens of Paris and leading members of the university there, and by the end of the Middle Ages it was one of the wealthiest female communities within the Cistercian Order. It was suppressed in 1790, and its goods and chattels dispersed.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BOOK OF HOURS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816146051407,"sku":"K118","price":39500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_7998.jpg?v=1781794942"},{"product_id":"maggi-giovanni-rossi-bartolomeo-with-cavalieri-giovanni-battista","title":"MAGGI, Giovanni, ROSSI, Bartolomeo. [with] CAVALIERI, Giovanni Battista","description":"\u003cp\u003eVery good copies of these superb illustrated works, in fine impression on high-quality paper, celebrating the antiquities of Rome. Commissioned by the printer Andrea della Vaccaria, this first edition of  Ornamenti di fabriche  is a collection of 24 plates some hand-coloured in this copy engraved by the artist Giovanni Maggi (1566-1618), with narrative captions composed by the scholar Bartolomeo Rossi. The illustrations guide the readers through the meanders of Rome towards the discovery of ancient and modern monuments including obelisks with hieroglyphs, the sculpted horses on the Quirinal, Trajan s column, and the more recent catafalques for the funerals of Sixtus V and Alessandro Farnese. Each monument provides the occasion for a snapshot of brief and juicy antiquarian narratives, basking in epigraphic material,  vedute , classicism and the charm of ruins. Despite its title,  Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae  is not strictly a third edition of its namesake original, but a collection of plates from the previous ones (1561, 1562) commissioned by the publisher Lorenzo della Vaccheria, Andrea s father. Produced by Cherubino Alberti and Orazio Santis under the supervision of the engraver Giovanni Battista Cavalieri (c.1525-1601), it provides a magnificent gallery of the most renowned Roman statues such as the Laocoon and Marcus Aurelius on horseback as well as more general sculptures like satyrs, deities, river gods, shepherds, emperors and heroes. Both works are outstanding examples of the genre of Roman print collections so dear to Renaissance humanists and artists. They epitomize the art of  vedutismo  and perspective, the new science of epigraphy (including hieroglyphs), the achievements of Renaissance classicism, historiography and antiquarianism, and the seed of the  picturesque  movement of the C18. Whilst they gave the opportunity for  arm-chair travelling  to learned readers who did not wish to leave their homes, these collections also inspired the sketches and works of painters, engravers and architects and the study of humanists, who had visited seen them in Rome and purchased a memento for reference. A couple of copies are recorded in which I and II are bound together; they may have been sold in that fashion by Andrea della Vaccheria who probably had plates from Cavalieri s work left over from his father s time hence the inconsistent composition of recorded copies.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MAGGI, Giovanni, ROSSI, Bartolomeo. [with] CAVALIERI, Giovanni Battista","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816154505551,"sku":"L1986","price":3250.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/DSC_8537.jpg?v=1781794922"},{"product_id":"ramusio-giovanni-battista","title":"RAMUSIO, Giovanni Battista","description":"\u003cp\u003eRemarkably crisp and clean copies of one of the most important collections of voyages and discoveries, beautifully illustrated. As here, most recorded sets are composed of different editions and those like this featuring the most complete editions of each of the individual volumes are rare. 1583 is the first complete (and augmented) edition of vol. 2, and 1606 and 1613 the only complete ones of vols. 1 and 3 (Brunet, IV, 1100-1101), adding for example the travels of Barents and Federici for the first time. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n Born in Treviso, Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557) worked as secretary and envoy to Alvise Mocenigo, having access to the latest information on expeditions and travels of exploration reaching Venice from abroad. First published by Ludovico Giunta in three separate volumes between 1550 and 1565,  Delle navigationi  was a collection of the first-hand Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Dutch (all translated in the Italian vernacular) and Italian accounts of voyages to Asia, Africa and America published up to that time, illustrated with bespoke maps the first work of its kind. The first volume is mainly devoted to  countries which have been known for 300 years , e.g., from Africa (and the kingdom of Prester John) to the Eastern Indies. The second features the accounts of Marco Polo on the Tartars and China (with the first mention of tea in Europe), as well as notices on Persia, Armenia and Paolo Giovio s ground-breaking work on Muscovy. The third is devoted to the world  unknown to the ancients  Columbus s navigations, Cort éz and Pizarro s expeditions, and notices on Mexico, Peru and other American kingdoms. In addition to engaging information on local flora, fauna, politics and customs,  Delle navigationi  provided accurate topographical information through handsome and innovative fold-out woodcut and copperplate maps illustrating Cuzco in Peru, Nuova Francia (Newfoundland) the second separate map of Northeast America with the colony of Montreal (the earliest printed such topographical plan for North America), Brazil, Sumatra (the first map of any island in South-Eastern Asia), Eastern Africa, one of the most complete maps of the Western Hemisphere, and a plan of the Mexican city of Temistitan. Through their re-prints of 1606 and 1613, the Giunta capitalised on the continuing commercial success of collections of travel writings epitomised by Richard Hakluyt s  Principal Navigations  (1589), the original model of which was, as it were, Ramusio s work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"RAMUSIO, Giovanni Battista","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816154964303,"sku":"K128","price":39500.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_5352-copy.jpg?v=1781794920"},{"product_id":"speed-robert","title":"SPEED, Robert","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe fifth edition of Robert Speed s genial, burlesque mock-heroic satire; all early editions of which are rare. The work contains two remarkable woodcut illustrations; the first on the title depicts a food fight that takes place in prison, the second shows officers of the watch, with pikes, escorting a tailor to prison. Robert Speed s pamphlet explains how the keeper and several of his minions joined imprisoned  rakehells  and  bawds  in a revel that  turn d Nighte into day by Drinking, Whoreing, Swearing, Roaring, and Cursing  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n   The Counter-Scuffe  was often reprinted throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries  a new edition was listed as late as 1741 and there were references to it at least until the middle of the nineteenth century. The central plot is a battle between two tradesmen: a country-born man who was pressed into military service and went to war as a captain, and a gold-smith. Besides the normal retinue of prisoners, the fracas also involves a priest and a lawyer, whom the balladeer notes should never have been housed with such ruffians. They represent the church and the law, both helpless to lead common men as they should because through debt each has lowered himself to join them. Prison food for Lent is depicted as meatless but plentiful, with a groaning table of assorted shellfish and other seafood all swimming in that rich delicacy, butter, with the latter s slipperiness being a key component of the burlesque   The melee first breaks out with pots and stools, but soon the goldsmith starts a food fight, with the priest taking advantage of the distractions to dine right in the middle of it. The goldsmith insults the captain and his ilk as mere amateur soldiers with rusty swords and no military skills. The captain threatens to whip him for saying this, so the goldsmith throws a jug at him; in response, the captain hurls a plate of buttered fish, with the resulting mess causing the goldsmith to slide,  and all be butter-fishified.  Carole Fungaroli Sargent. \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n  Early modern texts across the archive appropriate the language of cookery to examine the relationship between humans and other forms of life. Some texts, like Robert Speed s  The Counter Scuffle (1637), go so far as to replace human characters with foodstuffs. This poem set in a London debtors prison, stages and epic food-fight in which various edibles are deployed as weapons in a scuffle between two socially-stratified characters, Ellis and the Captain. Speed uses metonymy, a trope that operates according to a logic of attachment and substitution, to align human bodies and the food they consume. The poem also attributes to foodstuffs various affective capacities. For example, we read,  the frightened Custard quak d for feare , a description linked rhetorically to Ellis s human reaction upon being taunted by the Captain:  And all his blood ran to his heart,\/ He shook, and quak d in every part with anger.  At its climax the poem elaborates these linked affects by replacing the human characters with the edible weapons they wield.  Instead of weapons made of Steele,\/ The Captaine took a salted Eele    J. Feerick, V. Nardizzi.  The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature  \u003cbr\u003e\n  \u003cbr\u003e\n A very good copy of this charming burlesque and satirical work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"SPEED, Robert","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816155390287,"sku":"L2240","price":2350.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_4985.jpg?v=1781794915"},{"product_id":"imperiali-giovanni","title":"IMPERIALI, Giovanni","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn excellent, clean copy of the FIRST EDITION of this celebration of European Renaissance culture. Giovanni Imperiali (1596?-1670) was a physician from Vicenza, much appreciated by Pope Urban VIII and close to the circle of Cesare Cremonini, a controversial philosopher who had been his teacher. The work was inspired by the classic  de viris illustribus  genre recounting the exemplary deeds of great historical or literary figures. The title  musaeum  originally a  temple of the Muses  devoted to the study of the arts looked back to the Hellenistic Musaeum at Alexandria which, like a university, gathered together the best intellectual worthies. At the same time, Imperiale interpreted  musaeum  in its modern meaning, as a place of material commemoration: since Roman times it had been traditional to celebrate the glory of famous men through images, paintings and marble sculptures as exempla of glory and virtue. The first part presents the  imagines ad vivum expressae  drawn, that is,  to the life , realistically of major figures of the C16, especially of the intellectual world. The engraved oval portraits of  vires illustres  e.g., Paolo Giovio, Vesalius, Guicciardini, Justus Lipsius, Llull, Tasso, Faber, Aldrovandi and Paulus Manutius ( arbiter of the Muses and of elegance ) within an architectural cartouche reproduced the epigraphic nature of monuments, followed by a short text celebrating their achievements. Among the Englishmen and Scotsmen represented are John Barclay, James Crichton ( The Admirable Crichton ) and Reginald Pole. It is one of the best sources for discovering what the great figures of the arts and sciences of the C16 really looked like. The second part is devoted to the  images of the soul  ( animorum imagines ) explaining the excellence of human  ingenium , with references to the worthies of the first part, and the particular  gifts  of creativity that individuals have from birth. Most interestingly, Imperiali relied on traditional Platonic, Aristotelian, Pythagoric and Galenic theories to discuss  the special importance of fantasy for the artistic ingenium along with various forms of talent Thus it became clear for the first time why great painters or sculptors or musicians are not at the same time necessarily great thinkers or scientists or inventors and vice versa ; he also mentioned the melancholia which often plagues artists ( Humankinds: The Renaissance and Its Anthropologies , 236-37). An utterly innovative, finely illustrated fruit of the late Renaissance.  The library of the Dukes of Arenberg to which the bookplate refers was situated in the castle of Nordkirchen, which Engelbert-Marie (1872-1949) purchased in 1903.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"IMPERIALI, Giovanni","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816155488591,"sku":"L2983","price":2450.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/IMG_5021.jpg?v=1781794915"},{"product_id":"straparola-gianfrancesco","title":"STRAPAROLA, Gianfrancesco","description":"\u003cp\u003eScarce, beautifully illustrated edition of this incredibly successful, influential and entertaining florilegium of novellae, first published in 1551 in the wake of Giacomo Morlini s collection of 1520. Very little is known of Gianfrancesco Straparola (1480-1557), except that, in half a century, his literary talent led to the publication of over 20 editions or reprints of  Piacevolissime notti  in Italian and French. As in Boccaccio s  Decameron , the stories are presented as the pastime of a group of aristocrats who have gathered in the Venetian island of Murano for leisure, during  thirteen pleasant nights . The stories are illustrated with fine woodcuts and follow accidents typical of traditional fairy and folk tales. They often narrate the difficulties of protagonists who are poor or unfortunate and eventually rise to become rich and powerful, as in the story of Costantino Fortunato, impoverished by his brothers but assisted by his magical female cat the seed of Perrault s  Puss in Boots . Plotline themes like the subdivision of inheritance between siblings, the wrongdoings of stepmothers against their stepdaughters, the assistance of talking animals, unpleasant pranks which lead to undeserved prison and the consequences of lies provided the basic structure by which Straparola reinvented and brought to print the oral heritage of European folklore. His stories influenced authors of the likes of Shakespeare (Gillespie,  Shakespeare s Books , 474) and provided fresh material for innovative theatre practitioners like Robert Armin the famous  clown  and  fool  of Shakespeare s Jacobean plays who published the English adaptation of one of Straparola s  thirteen pleasant  stories in 1609.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"STRAPAROLA, Gianfrancesco","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57816155586895,"sku":"L2887","price":2400.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/files\/1_d016bc74-e59b-4f35-8c35-128e6d3b7c20.jpg?v=1781794914"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1016\/2425\/0703\/collections\/Screenshot_2026-06-13_at_6.38.15_PM.png?v=1781372335","url":"https:\/\/sokol-books-ltd.myshopify.com\/collections\/illustrated-books.oembed","provider":"Sokol Books Ltd","version":"1.0","type":"link"}