Diverse imprese accommodate a diverse moralità, ...tratte da gli Emblemi dell'Alciato.

ALCIATI'S EMBLEMS, WITH PRINTING-HOUSE CORRECTIONS & ERRORS

Title enclosed in elaborate one-piece architectural woodcut border, all subsequent pages with four-piece woodcut borders, 180 emblems each illustrated with a half-page woodcut vignette, with final nine of trees. 

8vo (192 x 120mm). 191, [1]pp. Contemporary limp vellum sewn on five alum-tawed bands, yapp edges (endpapers renewed, recased in original binding, vellum a trifle stained, scattered wormholes to upper cover, some loss due to nibbling at head). 

Lyon: Guillaume Rouille, 

An appealing later edition of Andrea Alciati's groundbreaking book of emblems, printed in Lyon by Guillaume Rouillé and part of an extensive programme of printing of the work initiated by Rouillé and Mace Bonhomme in 1548. The earliest of their editions of Alciati's popular work were printed in Latin; the text as it appears here, in the Italian translation of editor Giovanni Marquale, was first printed in 1551.  While the 1549 edition contained only 136 emblems, by 1551 this number had increased to 180, as here. 

First printed in 1531 in an unauthorised edition by Augsburg printer Heinrich Steyner, from a manuscript in circulation, Alciati's was the landmark text which launched the entire emblematic genre. "From this modest beginning sprang the most frequently reprinted emblem book in history. It appeared in over 200 editions in the 16th and 17th centuries alone, and was almost immediately translated into the vernacular... its repertory of images was appropriated by the material culture and reproduced in tapestry hangings, plasterwork and domestic ornament" (Manning). It was printed not only in Latin, but in French, German, Italian (as here), Spanish, and English.

The emblems here are grouped in broad themes - within the theme of 'Amore' for example, are contained individual emblems representing the power of love, virtuous love, love of virtue, the souring of love, the Sirens, on colours, on men losing their memories due to love, and so on. Each page consists of an emblematic woodcut vignette and accompanying text - a poem or motto - all contained within an elaborate woodcut border. Both the borders and illustrations are occasionally signed 'P.V.', for engraver and painter Pierre Vase - also known as Pierre Eskrich.

There are a couple of early, print-house errors and corrections here - a neat hand has painstakingly inked in the title of p.114, 'nel vecchio innamorato', for which the type appears never to have been set; and the vignette on p.159 of 'vendetta giusta' has been printed upside down. 

Discreet repairs to edges on several leaves at beginning and end, thumbing to title, mild browning otherwise a good copy. 

Baudrier, Bibliographie Lyonnaise, IX p. 295. Landwehr, Romanic, 69. French Emblem Books F.046. CNCE 850.

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Stock Code: 252563