Vergilius Maro, Publius.

folio (333 x 223mm.), double column, title-pages printed in red and black within a woodcut architectural border, full-page woodcut of Virgil and his associates on +2r, 207 woodcuts of various sizes, contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over boards, manuscript marginalia through Eclogues and for the introductory notes to the Aeneid, lacking +3-5, inner margins of first few leaves strengthened, outer margins of a2-7, ++1 and TT8 repaired with slight loss to text and marginalia, worming to some leaves, light staining and spotting, binding worn

Robert Lenkiewicz (1941-2002), artist

Mortimer, Harvard French 537; Renouard, Badius III 370-372; Baudrier, Bib. lyonnaise, sér. 12, p. 344

The highly evocative woodcuts (from the blocks designed for Johann Grüninger's edition of 1502) in this, the first Lyon edition edited by J. Badius Ascensius, capture the essence of Vergil's Arcadian and rustic landscapes as well as the epic sweep of the Aeneid. In the full-page woodcut Vergil is crowned by Calliope and flanked by some of his contemporaries. The other figures are Cornelius Gallus (the poet of whose work only a tiny fragment is known), Lucius Varius Rufus and Plotius Tucca (Vergil's executors), a skulking Bavius and Maevius (a pair of critics whose work is mocked in the third Eclogue), Maecenas (Vergil's patron), the emperor Augustus and Gaius Asinius Pollio (the poet and historian to whom the eighth Eclogue is addressed).