Michael Steinbach, Rare Books

Fulvio, Andrea J. Illustrium imagines. Rom, Mazzocchi, 1517. 17,5 : 12 cm. 120 numbered leaves. title in xylographic border, 204 portraits in round frame, all surounded by decoreted borders, printers mark in woodcut. Pargamin in contemporary styl, back title.

Erste irst edition of the earliest collection of reproduction of ancient coins to be printed. From the introduction of the book we learn that Cardinal Sadoleto haat the idea which he suggested to Fulvio, who selected 204 coins and medals from the numismatic collection of Mazzocchi. who not only was a gifted printer but also an ardent collector of books and art objects. The delicated wooden portraits and the charming frames are attributed to the Venetian artist Ugo da Carpi (ca. 1480-1532). These portraits, showing famous man und women, mostly emporers and their wives, of the Roman, Byzantine and German mediaval history, served the sixtheens century as a basic book for the study of Greek and Roman iconography. Fulvio's book became the prototype of some other 16th century publications of that kind (Servolini,Ugo da Carpi, illustrator del libro in Gutenberg Jahrbuch, Main 1950, p. 202). "The conception of these portraits as white on black hampers, comparisions with the more conventinal cutting in Ugo's signed books. They are certainly the result of a master at work". - Title and leavesr IV, XXX, XXXI, XLIX, LXXIV and LXXV in facsimile on old paper, occassionaly some menor foxing, leaf IV missbound; back title with wrong date. - In all a good copy, with wide margins of these rare book. - Adams F 1156; Cicognara 2851; Mortimer 203; Sander 2978.

Euro5500

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