Search Results: Renaissance and Early Modern Humanism from Rodger Friedman Rare Book Studio

Strasbourg: Daniel Elzevir and David Hautt, 1635-1636. First Latin edition of Systema Cosmicum and first edition of Nov-antiqua. Very Good. Three works in one volume. Quarto (22 cm); Systema cosmicum: [16], 495, [24] pages, including engraved title page, portrait and illustrations, Augustae Treboc[corum] [i.e., Strasbourg] : impensis Elzeviriorum, typis Davidis Hautti, 1635; Nov-antiqua: [8], 60 [4] pages, text printed in Latin and Italian in parallel columns, Augustae Treboc [corum], impensis Elzevirorum, typis Davidis Huatti, 1636; Tractatus: [8], 104 pages [lacks plate], Argentorati, typis Davidis Hautti, 1635. In early19th-century scarlet-dyed sheep uniquely embossed across the grain with rows of a toothed pattern, with gilt scroll border composed of interlocking fleurons and spine decorated and titled direct in gilt. Preserved in red cloth chemise and red cloth slipcase with 1/4 polished leather titled in gilt. Bookplate of Joannis De Bizzaro, and a manuscript note in Italian on first… Read More

Paris: Didot, Anno VIII (1800). Acceptable. 12mo (14 cm); 100 pages. In full polished calf with gilt-tooled border, spine decorated in gilt, with red leather title label. Bright pink pastepaper endleaves! Edges and corners worn, upper board a little scuffed, but in all a very pleasant little book. Reference: Bergamo, Raccolta Tassiana, #1239. Tasso's pastoral romance, printed in pocketbook format by the great Parisian house of Didot.

Crispoli [i.e. , Parma]: Impresso co' carratteri Bodoniani, 1793. Fine. Large folio (45 cm); xxxv, 117, [2 blank] pages. Engraved head-piece by Lucatelli. Richly bound in recent polished brown half leather over marbled paper-covered boards, borders double ruled in gilt; spine in six compartments ruled and titled in gilt. Top edge gilt. Fore edge and bottom edge untrimmed. Protected in 20th-century (?) marbled paper-covered slipcase. References: Brooks 514; De Lama II,89; Bergamo, Raccolta Tassiana, #1232 ("edizione di particolare bellezza ed eleganza"). See also Gamba 958 ("suntuosa edizione"). Giambattista Bodoni quite adored this rather light pastoral romance by Torquato Tasso. It was the second book he printed on his own private press (before he had permission to work on his own in addition to running the Royal press) in 1789, in a quarto format. Once his private He revisited the text twice more, again in smaller formats. The 1793 edition is the first and only folio production of the… Read More

Bologna, 1699.. Good. 20 lines of text on 1 leaf watermarked laid paper (267 x 190 mm), addressed to an agent in the sale of two pictures. Slight tears where the paper has disintegrated under ink strokes result in negligible loss. Marcantonio Franceschini (1648-1729) is considered the quintessential representative of Bolognese classicism of the late 17th century. Schooled in a baroque tradition arching back to the Caracci, the artist gracefully anticipated elements of the subsequent neoclassical style. Among his most important projects was the decoration of a suite of rooms in the Liechtenstein Garden Palace at Rossau-Vienna, commissioned by Johann Adam Andreas, Prince of Liechtenstein (1656-1712). The letter offered here is an elegant register of market pressures and personal anxieties involved in Franceschini's commercial negotiations. It shows the artist eager to prevent his agent from underselling terms Franceschini had established with Prince Johann Adam. Franceschini writes to the agent… Read More

New York: Burt Franklin, 1973. Reprint. Very Good. 19 cm; 272 pages. Bound in red cloth. No dust jacket. Very light shelf wear only, else unblemished. Reprint of the 1907 edition, of which only volume 1 was published.

New York: Henry Schuman, [n.d.]. First edition. 26 cm; xii, 361 pages, and 12 plates. Original black cloth. A fine copy, with the bookplate of Goodspeed's Book Shop Reference Library.

New York: H. P. Kraus, n.d. [later 1990s]. First edition. 200 pages. Price list laid in. Original wraps. Richly illustrated. Printed at the Stinehour Press, designed by Jerry Kelly and Kit Curry. Very good, with shelf-wear only.

New York and London: Scribner & Welford; John C. Nimmo, 1885. First edition of this translation; limited to 200 copies in the US and 300 in Great Britain.. Acceptable. Octavo (23 cm); 3 preliminary leaves, [9]-31, v, [7]-494 pages. Engraved frontispiece portrait of La Bruyere, six additional engraved portraits by Benjamin Damman of Montaigne, Descartes, Le Brun, Louis XIV, William III, and Bossuet. Fifteen (of sixteen) vignette headpieces engraved on tissue by Valentine Foulquier and mounted at chapter titles (lacks "Of the Affections," apparently left out in manufacture and not caught by the quality control department). Bound in original quarter cream vellum over green cloth, stamped in gilt. Corners rubbed; upper joint splitting near crown; gilt images on vellum spine rubbed away. Google found the rave review that appeared in the Daily Telegraph when this book came out. Let the last line stand in for the entire review: "Six portraits specially etched by M. Damman, a series of lovely… Read More

New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1939. First edition. 348 pages. Original gray cloth. Fine condition.

Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1930. Very Good. 25 cm; 359 pages, 50 facsimiles in text. Bound in gray buckram with leather title label on spine. Original wrappers bound in.

Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1959. Wraps. Very Good. 347 p., and 7 plates. Wraps, unopened.

Paris: Didot, 1812. Second edition. Bound in contemporary mottled pink paper-covered boards, worn. . Very Good. 31cm; xiii, [i], 85 pages. Title and text in French and Italian on facing pages. Bridgewater arms stamped in red on both title pages; Egerton arms stamped in red at head of appendix (a survey of critcism on Comus). A 16-page genealogy in French of the Bridgewater family dated 1810 bound in, stamped with Bridgewater arms. Scattered light foxing only. The British eccentric Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (1756-1829) commissioned this translation into French and Italian of Milton's Comus in part to honor his own ancestor, John Egerton, who was present at the first performance of it. First issued in 1806, Egerton chose to reprint the corrected text with the celebrated firm of Didot. A third issue of the Italian text was printed later the same year.

Paris: Pierre Mettayer, 1624. Second Printing. Quarto (22 cm); [16], 540 pages. Woodcut initials and ornaments. Roman and italic type. Woodcut printer's device on the title-page. In contemporary full brown plain leather boards, spine with five raised bands, compartments decorated in gilt, with title stamped in gilt directly on spine ("Verulami de Augm. Sc."). Ownership inscriptions on title page (dated 1724). Text unmarred. References: Gibson, "Bacon," 130. Second printing after the London edition the previous year, and the first European printing of Bacon's "De augmentis scientiarum." Effectively a greatly expanded version in Latin of his "Advancement of Learning" (1605), this is the book that, in its Paris printing, spread the word of the scientific method across Europe, influencing Descartes and the philosophers of the Enlightenment, Locke, Leibniz, Huygens and Voltaire.

Urbino: Domenico Frisolino, 1575. Hard cover. Very Good. Folio; [16], 278 pages. Title page and all text pages ruled in typographic border. Typographic ornament on title page, 18 historiated initials (some duplicates) showing putti with geometer's instruments against a background of Italian hill towns. Numerous geometric figures in text. Bound in c19 (?) full mint green sheep, with red leather title label lettered and tooled in gilt. Edges stained indigo. Binding somewhat scuffed, with upper joint cracked; spine darkened and scuffed. Early ownership inscription on title page, later bookplate on front pastedown. Few marginal notes in contemporary hand. Very light occasional foxing present. References: Moranti, #4 ("un vero capolavoro tipografico" p.14); Gamba 1386 ("Nobile edizione"); Adams, E-995;; Brunet, II, 1090; Graesse, II, 513; Thomas-Stanford, 42; Olschki, Choix, 6539 ("Traduction très estimée"). The first book printed in Urbino in the 16th century, and only the fourth overall.… Read More

Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1549. Good. Octavo ( 17 cm); 723, [21] pages, last blank. Woodcut initials. In contemporary (or 17th century) vellum-covered boards, with leather label titled in gilt. Titled in manuscript on bottom edge. Pages not bright, with some light staining throughout. 19th-century armorial bookplate in chromolithograph. Vellum doesn't want to close in dry weather. References: Schweiger, Greek, 232; BM Italian 512, Adams P-1071. Gamba 1394 ("Bella edizione"). See also Bongi, 252. First edition in a modern language of the novelistic biography of Apollonius of Tyana by the Hellenistic writer Philostratus of Lemnos (d. 230). Aldus had published a Latin translation at the beginning of the century, but popular clamor grew as Apollonius came to be seen as a sort of Jesus, or a parallel Jesus, or an alternative Jesus, or perhaps the real Jesus. No less than three major publishing houses rushed to get an Italian version of Philostratus out to the public. Torrentino's issue,… Read More

Venice: Plinio Pietrasanta, 1554. First edition. Very Good. Quarto (22 cm); 45, [3] pages (last leaf blank). Title within woodcut architectural border. Historiated woodcut initials throughout. In half vellum over 17th- or 18th-century woodblock printed paste paper, titled in manuscript on spine. Lower board ruptured near corner, subsequently rebuilt. Some leaves toned brown. Early ownership inscriptions and later bibliographical notes on front free endpaper and on rear pastedown. References: Adams F-182; Olschki, Choix de livres anciens, VI, 5817 This essay extolling marriage is an early artifact of modern ethnography, in that it poses as a survey of marriage customs through history and around the world. In true humanist fashion, Fausto mines the ancient historians for most of his material. So we find out that in Lacedaemonia (or, Atlantis), men who refused to marry were forced to run naked through the forum in the dead of winter, and that in Assyria, husbands were bound by law to obey… Read More

Weisbaden: Guido Pressler, 1965. 365 pages, with 144 illustrations of printer's devices. Bound in cloth. Ex-library with discard stamp. Library ownership stamps, card pocket. Library shelf mark removed from spine. Contents unblemished. German printers' devices of the 16th century.

Venice: Giovanni Battista e Marchio Sessa, 1562. First edition. Very Good. Octavo (14 cm); [4], 119, [1] leaves, signed A-P\8. Printer's Pegasus device framed by breasty lions, grotesques, fruits, etc. on title page. Woodcut initials, and 23 woodcuts throughout text of mnemonic diagrams and charts, musical notation, and illustrations, which include a head labelled to show the areas responsible for different mental and sensory faculties (one of the earliest examples of phrenological illustration); and the buildings of a town labelled to indicate the businesses located within, such as "barbitonsor" (barbershop), "bovicida" (slaughterhouse), "abatia" (abbey), and "bibliopola" (bookstore displaying books in shop window). Bound in early full stiff vellum, label with title on spine. References: Adams D-732; Mortimer, Italian, 157; Brunet II, 789; BM Italian p.220. The mechanics of memory was an abiding concern of the polymath humanist Lodovico Dolce (d. 1568). He first approached it systematically… Read More

Argenatori [i.e., Strasbourg]: Matthias Schürer, 1508. Very Good. Small folio (29 cm); [128] pages. Round roman type. In later (20th-century?) half vellum over marbled boards. Ochre-dyed edges. Minor shelf wear. Marginal ink annotations in contemporary hand, especially in the third book (allegorical reading of Aeneid). Adams L-125 The four dialogues that compose this book were the gateway to the Florentine Platonism that characterized the latter part of the 15th century. Written around 1470, they began circulating in manuscript (including a deluxe copy dedicated to Federico da Montefeltro) around 1473 and did not see print until 1480, in an edition now lost. There were only four more printings before the 20th century, the last in 1511. All are rare. Landino was engaged by the Medici to teach at the Studio, and later at the Platonic Academy, where his students and colleagues included Ficino, Leon Battista Alberti, Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici (all of whom appear as characters in… Read More

New York: Shorewood Publishers, 1963. Cloth. Very Good. 25 cm. Illustrated. Cloth in slipcase.