Collaert, Adriaen

Avium vivae icones, in aes incisae & editae ab Adriano Collardo. [Venice:] Jacomo Paulini, [ca. 1600]



Oblong quarter-sheets (7 1/2 x 10 3/8 in.; 192 x 264 mm). Engraved title-page and 15 fine engraved plates of birds against landscape backgrounds after and by Collaert, without printed text as issued. Contemporary mottled sheep, plain endpapers, gilt edges; spine neatly repaired, some minor abrasion.

Early shelf label A / 27 on title-page

Copenhage/Anker 14; Ellis/Mengel 533 (later ed.); McGill/Wood (later ed.); Nissen, IVB 199; Ronsil 616

Plates: very clean and wide margined. Binding: spine neatly repaired, some minor abrasion.
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Evidently the first printing of this celebrated series of ornithological engravings; an unusually clean and wide-margined set. Collaert engraved these plates in Antwerp, but they were evidently sent to Italy for publication. A number of early seventeenth-century editions of Avium vivae icones are known, all undated, and some incorporating a second series of engravings. The present set is before all letters (captions, plate numbers, artist's signature) apart from the systematic names of the subjects and is evidently a very early, if not first, printing.

"This little collection of plates possesses considerable charm, the birds being pictured in a lively fashion and many of the backgrounds including not only carefully drawn botanical specimens but also scenes of human activities and habitations" (Ellis/Mengel).