CARTARI, Vincenzo.
Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi.
Venice, per Francesco Marcolini, 1556.
Small 4to, ff. 4, 12, [xiii]-cxxii, printed in italic letter, with large woodcut illustration to title and verso of last leaf, a few fine woodcut initials with an architectural theme; a very good copy in late eighteenth-century quarter calf.
First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients. Cartari concentrated on the iconography of the gods, explaining their guises and detailing their several attributes. His book was expressively written to aid artists, painters, and sculptors to understand and choose subject matters (see the publisher’s preface, f. 3). The book was an immense success; it went through numerous editions, some illustrated, and was translated into many languages, including into English in 1599. It became the iconographic handbook of painters throughout Europe for the next 250 years.
Cicognara 4684.
