MYTH FOR ARTISTS
CARTARI, Vincenzo.
Le imagini con la spositione de i dei de gli antichi ...
Venice, Francesco Marcolini, 1556.
Small 4to, ff. 4, 12, [xiii]–cxxii; in italic letter, large woodcut printer’s device to title and verso of last leaf, a few fine woodcut initials with an architectural theme; a few light marks; a very good copy in late eighteenth-century quarter calf, spine gilt with lettering-piece; a little wear to extremities; pale ownership inscription to title ‘Nicolai a Zucca'.
First edition of Cartari’s influential and successful treatise on the mythology of the ancients, the iconographic handbook of painters throughout Europe for the next 250 years.
Vincenzo Cartari, like his forebears, was a member of the d’Este court at Ferrara, and the present work is dedicated to Luigi d’Este (later Cardinal Protector of the Kingdom of France). 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 select subject matter (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.
‘Written testimonies decisively point to the influence of the Imagini on mythological depictions in frescoes by Giorgio Vasari in the Palazzo Vecchio, by Taddeo Zuccari in the Villa Farnese in Caparola, and by Iacopo Zucchi in the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome’, as well as works by Rubens, Poussin, and Carracci (DBI, trans.).
BM STC Italian, p. 152; EDIT16 CNCE 9751; USTC 819162; Cicognara 4684.
