VERGILIUS, Polydorus.

by Polydorus Vergilius

£2,750 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A very early owner of this copy, Theodorus de Baer, purchased this volume in Cologne in 1555, and remarkably had an ex-libris produced from movable italic type, looking uncannily similar to that employed by the printer Isingrinus. This is the earliest example of a printed ex-libris we have seen. . .A very good, attractively bound copy of this scarce edition of one of the most popular humanist works of the early C16. .Polydore Vergil (1470-1555) was an Italian scholar, historian and diplomat who spent many years in England where he is famous for his Anglica Historia (1513; 1534). First published in 1499, De rerum inventoribus was a Europe-wide success, both as an encyclopaedia and intriguing schoolbook. It is a history of inventions, which identifies inventors as founders of the arts and other traditions in the distant past and blends, within Renaissance inventio , the modern concepts of invention (a creation produced anew) and discovery (finding of something that was already there and making it known) (Atkinson, pp.2, 15). Part I provides an all-encompassing compendium of the origin of the world, the gods, the birth of humankind, the origin of languages, marriage and religion, gradually moving to inventors , from antiquity to Vergil s times, of disciplines (e.g., grammar, rhetoric, music, astrology, medicine, magic, necromancy, chiromancy, metallurgy, painting, horticulture, architecture, navigation), genres (e.g., tragedy, comedy), the city, law, the calendar, units for tel

• Binding: Hardcover

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