COLONNA, Francesco.

by Francesco Colonna

£125,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

The first and only incunable edition of this example of finest Renaissance book production, and a masterpiece of woodcut illustration. Rated as ‘the most beautiful book of the fifteenth century’ (Mortimer, p.131), it is also one of Aldus’s only seven illustrated books (Gibbs, ‘Aldus’, p.109). ‘Universally revered as a landmark in C15 typography’ (Harris). The absence of the errata leaf and the 4 preliminaries including an additional or substitutional titlepage, may indicate a first or early issue. Two woodblocks contain what are now considered the first Arabic words to appear in print, carved on a stone and over three doorways. ‘While the script of the first inscription recalls Islamic bookish hands, that of the second reprises the use of calligraphy in Arabic-Islamic culture, with the practise of inscribing monuments and artefacts’ (Piemontese, p.207). The woodcuts, in fresh, early impression in this copy, changed the history of Western book illustration and art, influencing the likes of Titian and the Carracci as well as the C16 French school after the work’s translation in 1546. Scholars have suggested that they were not designed in Aldus’s workshop, but were already present in the ms that reached him; their authorship has been linked to Mantegna, Alberti or Benedetto Bordon; certainly to a northern Italian artist. An anonymous cutter transferred them onto woodblocks in Venice. Scholars have suggested that, in order to portray classical monuments, rui

• Binding: Hardcover

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