Commentarii secundo aucti in Libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de Medica Materia. Adiectis quamplurimis plantarum, & animalium imaginibus, quæ in priore editione non habentur, eodem auctore. Hic accessit eivsdem Apologia Adversus Amathum Lusita... - [AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF RENAISSANCE PHARMACOLOGY]

1559. Venetiis, In Officina Valgrisiana, 1559. Folio. (31,5x22,5 cm) Contemporary full Italian vellum. (100),776 pp. + Apologia (having its own title page) 46,(1) pp. Printers woodcut-device at both titles and on last leaf verso. With more than 700 fine wood-cuts in the text (of animals and plants). Light browning to title page, 2 corners repaired, no loss of text, 6 last leaves strengthened in outer margins, no loss of text. A few scattered brown spots and a few marginal notes. In general fine and clean, printed on good paper. Old name on title, Wolffgangus Hendl, 1564 P.V.Q. Scarce third Latin edition of this, the most famous commentary on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, having here also the text of Dioscorides, who was the originator of the Materia Medica of antiquity. The first edition was printed 1554 and it had fewer and smaller illustrations in the text. "The use of illustrations to aid in describing and identifying plants was taken up enthusiastically by the Italian botanists. Ghini himself planned an illustrated work which was not carried out, but he helped and encouraged Mattioli to proceed with his Commentarii in VI Dioscoridis Libros which appeared with over 500 mostly excellent figures only a dozen years after Fuchs, and a few years later was reissued with some 1200 figures...his commentaries on Dioscorides became practically a general flora: they were immensely popular in Europe because of their mostly excellent illustrations, and many edition were published in Latin, Italian, German and Czech." (A.G. Morton). In Germany it was published under the title "New Kräuterbuch" and according to Sarton, Mattioli became a magnet of botanical information. - Pritzel 1559. - Choulant p. 80 - Nissen BBI: 1305.