Alciati | Emblemata, Lyon, 1548, later half calf

Andrea Alciati

Emblemata. Lyon: (Macé Bonhomme for) Guillaume Rouillé, 1548

8vo (186 x 119mm.), woodcut printer's device on title-page, title within woodcut border, each page with a woodcut illustration and various woodcut borders, nineteenth-century half calf, lacking I1 (supplied both in modern facsimile and with a leaf from a later edition), blank foot of title-page torn away

First Bonhomme and Rouillé edition, a charming illustrated edition of Alciati's emblem book, with fine woodcuts by Pierre Eskrich of Lyon (also known as Pierre Vase, his initials P.V. appear at the foot of the title-page border). This was one of Eskrich's first commissions for the Lyon printers; he had just arrived from Paris because of his Protestant beliefs, and he subsequently left Lyon in 1562 for Geneva.

This was also issued in 1548 in a 16mo version, without the woodcut borders.

LITERATURE

Adams, Rawles and Saunders F.020 (assuming that the 1548 16mo edition predates the 8vo); cf. Van Gültlingen, Bonhomme 102 (16mo edition, without borders); Mortimer, Harvard French 15 (1549 French text edition with the same woodcuts and borders)

PROVENANCE

"Anno Domini 1768", manuscript note on verso of title-page; Felix van Hulst, signature on verso of flyleaf dated 1830; L. Froissart, bookplate, sale, January 1977