FERRARI, Giovanni Battista De Florum Cultura libri IV. Rome, Stefano Paolini, 1633
4to (240 x 168 mm), pp [xii including blank a6] 522 [16, without terminal blank] with engraved frontispiece (bound after prelims), title, and 45 plates; some occasional slight browning as often, a fine copy in early eighteenth-century Italian vellum, labelled in gilt on gilt-framed orange ground on spine, floral endleaves printed in colours, with the bookplate of the Banzi library with shelfmark. £4000
First edition of the first treatise on floriculture, and a masterpiece of Baroque chalcography. Ferrari's work documents the emergence of the flower garden per se as distinct from its precursor in the hortus medicus. Book one discusses the layout of the flower garden, giving as examples contemporary gardens such as that of Francesco Caetani. Book two is devoted to individual flowers and their cultivation, such as lilies, narcissi, hyacinths, peonies, carnations, and anemones, many newly introduced, and some described and illustrated here for the first time, including several South African species. Four Cape plants are illustrated, Amaryllis belladonna, Brunsvigia orientalis, Haemanthus coccineus, and Ferraria crispa, the latter named after Ferrari. The third book is on general horticulture, and the final book discusses the use (i.e. aesthetic and moral, but non-medical) and beauty of flowers. There is also a chapter on flower arrangements in seventeenth-century Rome, and the role played by sculptors and artists in their creation. This book was illustrated by the greatest Roman artists of the day, and paid for by Francesco Barberini, to whom the work is dedicated. Ferrari, a Jesuit priest, was in charge of the Barberini gardens.
20 plates depict individual flowers, 8 are of parterres, 5 of garden implements, and 6 of vases and bouquets; they mostly feature attractive scroll captions. These plates are by Anna Maria Vaiani, and were later used in expanded editions of De Bry's Florilegium. There are also 7 fine allegorical plates (including the frontispiece), engraved by J.F. Greuter and Claude Mellon after designs by Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni, and Andrea Sacchi. They depict seven days in the life of Flora, illustrating a series of stories by Ferrari himself, and include a plate by Sacchi in which Flora is cursing the lazy gardener Limax and the flower thief Brucas; the first is being transformed into a slug, and the latter into a caterpillar. The plate of the banquet of the gods on p. 97 is in the version by Pietro da Cortona; sometimes an inferior version of the same theme by Lanfranco is found in lieu.
John Collins, in Sotheby's Stiftung fur Botanik catalogue (Arpad Plesch collection) 1975, nos 258-259, distinguishes between two issues, having completely different typesettings and slight differences in collation. The above copy compares with n. 258.
Hunt 222; Johnston 184; Nissen BBI 620; Piantanida et al 1799
£4000
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