Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica materia - photo 1
Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica materia - photo 2
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Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica materia

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$ 27 720
Auction dateClassic
02.02.2024 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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USA, New York
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ID 1129651
Lot 33 | Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica materia
MATTIOLI, Pietro Andrea (1501-c.1577) and DIOSCORIDES (c.40-90). Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica materia. Venice: Valgrisi, 1565.

The large and unpressed Fletcher-Marshall copy of the first edition of Mattioli's commentary on Dioscorides with the full series of large striking woodcuts designed by Meyerpeck and Liberale. Although ostensibly a commentary on the work of the ancient physician Dioscorides, Mattioli's contribution to botany went far beyond the merely exegetical. His work played an important role in the identification of plants from differing traditions, and the text was updated throughout his lifetime and printed many times. The first illustrated edition appeared, in Latin, in 1554 with a fine series of quarter-page woodcuts—many of which served as models for the grand series of large woodcuts in the present copy.

These outstanding illustrations by Giorgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck represent the apogee of the art of scientific illustration in the sixteenth century. They were the culmination of technical virtuosity in botanical woodcut design: images "of considerable size and unprecedented complexity ... morphologically detailed and carefully shaded images whose style contrasts notably with the airy, simple elegance of Fuchs’ illustrations. Apart from the close massing of foliage, fruit and flower, such details as veins and even hairs are often depicted or suggested with great skill" (Bridson and Wendel). The majority of these large blocks first appeared in the 1562 Herbar (in Czech) and the 1563 New Kreuterbuch printed in Prague, but for this Valgrisi edition the scope was enlarged to include the equally fine zoological cuts and the genre scenes, along with further botanical images. This copy appears to be on particularly fine paper, with rich black impressions of the illustrations. Adams D-672; Hunt 94; Cleveland 93; Nissen BBI 1305. See Bridson and Wendel, Printmaking in the service of botany (1986) and Watson, Raphael, and Bain; The Mattioli Woodblocks (1989).

Folio (361 x 245mm). Woodcut printer's devices on title, colophon, and last page of De ratione distillandi aquas; woodcut portrait of Mattioli; over 1000 large botanical woodcuts (some light toning to a few gatherings). Contemporary Italian vellum, title in ink on spine (traces of green silk ties, light wear to head of spine). Provenance: a few neat early annotations to index – Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 1653-1716, possessor of the largest private book collection in Scotland at the turn of the 18th century (signature on title; see P.J.M. Willems, Bibliotheca Fletcheriana, or the Extraordinary Library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, 1999) – George Marshall, M.D. (bookplate; sold Sotheby's, 24 March 1980).
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