Mattioli, Pietro Andrea; Liberale, Giorgio [woodcuts]; Meyerpeck, Wolfgang [woodcuts]

DEI DISCORSI DI M. PIETRO ANDREAE MATTHIOLI SENESE MEDICO CESAREO, ET DEL SERENISSIMO PRINCIPE FERDINANDO ARCHIDUCA AUSTRIA & C. NELLI SEI LIBRI DI PEDACIO DIOSCORIDE ANAZARBEO DELLA MATERIA MEDICINALE… [TWO VOLUMES]

In Venetia [Venice]: appresso Bartolomeo de gli Alberti, 1604. Third Italian Language Edition. Folios, 2 volumes, [168], 672, [4] 673-1527 [1], [12]; VG; housed in two matching custom gray buckram clamshells, white labels with gilt titling; both volumes bound in full contemporary vellum, banded spine with contemporary ink titling; remnants of ties to fore edges; small red bookplate to front pastedown, Arthur Hugh Smith-Barry (1st Baron Barrymore) bookplate to front pastedown; text blocks with inconsistent foxing and toning, primarily due to paper used;

With full-page woodcut portrait of Mattioli within an elaborate border on k8 verso [recto blank]; with over 900 large woodcuts of plants, herbs, animals, fish and insects, many by Giorgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck;

Volume 1: top panel of spine missing; some wear and rubbing, slight splitting to lower rear hinge, some discoloration along extremities, water-stain along fore edge a third of the way down from the top, extends inwards, primarily to margin; Volume 2: lower two panels of spine repaired with a new piece of vellum, page 673 with vertical closed tear along bottom half of gutter, water-stain along fore edge a third of the way up from the bottom, extends inwards, primarily to margin, present only in first third and rear third of volume; Ex-Library, The New England Unit, Inc. of the Herb Society of America, Inc., bookplate to verso of ffep of volume 1, verso of sfep of volume 2, sticker to tail of clamshells; 6M2 and 6M7 bound in opposite places;

text in Italian; JB consignment; shelved case 4.

1344383

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NOTES

USTC 4034106; Pritzel, Thesaurus literaturae botanicae, 5988;

Mattioli was the most successful botanical writer in sixteenth century-Europe, known for his translation of the Materia Medica of Dioscorides. Constantly updated by Mattioli, he brought out a significant number of new editions. The Italian translation of De Materia Medica, supplemented with his own commentaries, was published in 1544 in Venice. The Commentarii was then translated into French (Lyon, 1561), Czech (Prague, 1562), and German (Prague, 1563). This Third Italian Language Edition contains the full series of magnificent large woodcuts. The botanical cuts first appeared in the 1562 Herbar (in Czech), and the 1563 New Kreuterbuch printed in Prague (in German), but this edition includes the equally fine cuts from the 1565 edition of the enlarged work which include zoological subjects and the genre scenes.

“Until well into the 17th century… all botanical studies were based on this book, and the greater part of any new botanical matter published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was in the form of a commentary on Dioscorides” (PMM)

At the end of the second volume is a treatise on distillation ''Del modo di distillare le acque da tutte le piante et come vi si possino conservare i loro veri odori & sapori''.;

This volume was originally in the library of Harriet Addams Brown, one of the original seven founders of The Herb Society of America in 1933.;