THE FIRST ILLUSTRATED PLUTARCH

Vitae … novissime … longe diligentius repositae, majoreque diligentia castigatae, cum copiosiore verioreque indice, necnon cum Aemilii Probi vitis, una cum figuris suis locis apte dispositis.

Venice, Melchiorre Sessa [the elder] & Pietro Ravani, 26 November 1516.

Folio, ff. [26], CCCLX, [1 (blank)]; title in red and black with woodcut printer’s device, woodcut criblé initials throughout and 78 large woodcut illustrations; lightly dust-stained title, with some neat marginal repairs, light marginal damp-stain to a few final leaves, but a very good copy in recent calf, panelled in blind with corner-pieces, upper board lettered directly in blind, fore-edge lettered in ink; near contemporary annotations in a neat hand to c. 50 pp., mainly concentrated in the lives of Hannibal and Demosthenes.

£4250

Approximately:
US $5364€4973

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Vitae … novissime … longe diligentius repositae, majoreque diligentia castigatae, cum copiosiore verioreque indice, necnon cum Aemilii Probi vitis, una cum figuris suis locis apte dispositis.

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First substantially illustrated edition of Plutarch’s Lives, with signs of early reading. First published in this popular translation in Paris in 1514 by French scholar-printer Jodocus Badius Ascensius (1462–1535) in collaboration with Jean Petit, the text is here accompanied by seventy-eight splendid woodcut illustrations in the manner of Benedetto Bordone (1460–1531), all specifically engraved for this edition and appearing here for the first time.

EDIT16 30046; USTC 849959; Essling 597; Renouard, Badius Ascensius Plutarchus B2 (III, p. 178); Sander 5785.

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