THE FOUR LAST THINGS
STANYHURST, William.
Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.
Antwerp, Cornelius Woons, 1661.
8vo, pp. [xxxii], ‘338’ (recte 336), [8 (index, privilege)]; copper-engraved frontispiece to A1 (partially detached) and a further 4 full-page engravings printed in-text by Frederik Bouttats after Philip Fruytiers; occasional light browning and dampstaining at head, otherwise a very good copy; bound in contemporary stiff vellum, sewn two-on with blue thread on 3 cords sewn in, yapp fore-edges, edges speckled red; light soiling, a few marks, yapp edges soiled at head, without front free endpaper; early ink ownership inscription ‘V ?lechien’ to front pastedown.
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Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.
First edition, rare, of this work on death, the Last Judgement, Hell, and Heaven, by the Irish Jesuit William Stanyhurst (1601–1663), illustrated with five striking full-page emblematic engravings.
Stanyhurst was born in Brussels to a family of Irish origins; like his Dei immortalis in corpore mortali patientis historia, the present work proved wildly popular, appearing in some thirty-two editions in Latin, Dutch, and later French, Spanish, Italian, and German. Each portion of the work is dedicated to one of the Four Last Things – death, the Last Judgement, Hell (including discussions of fire, eternal tears, and the feculent stench of the damned), and Heaven – and is preceded by a splendid engraving by Frederik Bouttats the Elder (1590–1661) after the Baroque miniaturist Philip Fruytiers (1610–1666). The attractive engraved title depicts an angel standing upon eternity (depicted as an orb encircled by an ouroboros), with the homo novus on the left guided to salvation and illuminated by sunlight, and the homo vetus on the right depicted as a merry lutenist, accompanied by a demon and teetering on the flaming precipice of Hell.
STCV 6605062; USTC 1537221; Daly, Jesuit Series V, J.1364; Landwehr, Low Countries 631; Praz, p. 502; Sommervogel VII, 1487, no. 6.
