ERASMUS, Desiderius
£9,500 · Offered by Sokol Books
Early and accurate edition of a Renaissance bestseller for letter-writing, first printed in 1522. Erasmus (1466-1536) was by far the most influential humanist of his time, especially as regards education in classics. De conscribendis epistolis was Erasmus s second most famous rhetorical textbook after De copia verborum, appearing in ninety editions. Written in Cambridge between 1509 and 1511, a unauthorised edition of the text came out in 1521 upon the initiative of a former student. This prompted Erasmus to publish in Basel his own full edition. Simon de Colines (c.1480 -1546) was a highly skilled printer, who was trained by Henry Estienne, led the Estienne workshop until Robert entered the business in 1526 and then became an independent and distinguished publisher in Paris. He was renowned for the beauty of his Roman, Greek and Italic fonts. This handsome binding, made in Leuven about 1545, shows a distinctive central plate illustrating a personification of Hope standing on a plinth (representing Faith as a solid ground) and looking up towards a cross (named as Christ s service for mankind) in the sky. This iconography appears to be influenced by the pietism of the Brethren of the Common Life, a religious movement flourished in the Netherlands from mid-fourteenth century on. According to Foot (vol. II, p. 359), there are four variants of this Spes panel: two are signed I P, one with and one without the word charitas , and two signed I B, also one with and one without charit
- Binding: Hardcover
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