Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

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09.12.2020 00:00UTC +01:00
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ID 470177
Los 125 | Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

The Falls of Princes. 1554

BOCCACCIO, Giovanni (1313-1375). A Treatise excellent and compendious, shewing and declaring, in maner of Tragedye, the falls of sondry most notable Princes and Princesses. Translated by John Lydgate. -John LYDGATE (c.1370-c.1451). The daunce of Machabree. London: Richard Tottel, 10 September 1554.



The first edition in English of the Dance of Death, illustrated here with woodcuts commissioned for this edition which ‘deserve to be ranked as among the best of English sixteenth century wood-engravings’ (Pforzheimer). The Dance Macabre is appended to the third edition of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, adapted from Boccaccio, and is often missing. The present edition of Lydate’s Boccaccio is considered ‘”by far the best of the printed editions” being …actually collated from several good manuscripts’ (Pforzheim); it is illustrated by a series of striking woodcuts which first appeared in the 1527 edition and which in turn are free copies of the 1476 Bruges edition. Lydgate based his translation of the Dance on a mural from the Cimetière des Saints-Innocents in Paris—the earliest known example of the danse macabre tradition, now lost. It is a perfect coda to the Fall of Princes, which recounts the vagaries of fortune in the lives of famous characters. An incomplete version of Lydgate’s Dance of Death was included with a printed book of hours for Sarum use in 1521, surviving in a single copy. Pforzheimer 74; STC 3177; Luborsky & Ingram, English Illustrated Books, 3177; see Sophie Oosterwijk and Stefanie Knöll, Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early Modern Europe.



Folio (280 x 190mm). Title with woodcut border, woodcut illustrations (wormholes and -tracks, heaviest in first and final 3-4 quires affecting some words and letters, marginal tear and holes in first first 3 leaves, some soiling, repair at upper inner side of title into border, neat tear into text on A4). Modern half calf over older marbled boards. Provenance: Theo[dore] Coke (early ownership inscription on title page) – Sion College Library (stamp on flyleaf and verso of title) – Blackwells (note, sold in 1977 to:) – William and Allison Kingsmill (grocery magnates and philanthropists).

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