ALCIATO, Andrea, trans. MARQUALE, Giovanni.

£12,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

A rare and lovely copy of the first Italian translation of Andrea Alciato’s (1492-1550) Emblemata, in an attractive binding preserving the panels of a contemporary French, probably Lyonnaise gold-tooled binding with painted coloured interlaces. There are 136 emblems, including the 11 ‘arbori’ or trees at the end, all set within an incredibly diverse and beautiful collection of woodcut borders. Alciato’s Emblemata, first published Augsburg 1531, is one of the most famous books of the Renaissance and the originator of the Emblems genre, which combined epigraphs and verses with enigmatic symbols and images to convey a moral message illustrative of virtues or vices. ‘For a very long period of time this was the only utterance in Italian of Alciati’ (Sears). Giovanni Marquale was mostly likely a publisher working in Venice. He did not simply reproduce Alciato’s texts but provided ‘an autonomous text which has strengths of its own … Marquale clearly aims at stylistic elaboration and enrichment, including the use of rhyme [and several metres] … He has a systematic tendency to reduce and simplify the moralising content: for Marquale, one moral message per emblem seems to suffice’ (Richard Greenwood, ‘Marquale’s Italian Version’ in Emblems in Glasgow (Glasgow: 1992), p. 58). The emblems are grouped according to their moral messages, as follows: divinity and religion, faith, prudence, strength, concord, hope, faithlessness, insanity, luxury, sloth, gluttony, astrology, love, fortune, pr

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.