ALCIATO, Andrea, trans. MARQUALE, Giovanni.

A rare and lovely copy of the first Italian translation of Andrea Alciato’s (1492-1550) Emblemata, in an attractive binding preserving the panels of a contemporary French, probably Lyonnaise gold-tooled binding with painted coloured interlaces. There are 136 emblems, including the 11 ‘arbori’ or trees at the end, all set within an incredibly diverse and beautiful collection of woodcut borders. Alciato’s Emblemata, first published Augsburg 1531, is one of the most famous books of the Renaissance and the originator of the Emblems genre, which combined epigraphs and verses with enigmatic symbols and images to convey a moral message illustrative of virtues or vices.  

‘For a very long period of time this was the only utterance in Italian of Alciati’ (Sears). Giovanni Marquale was mostly likely a publisher working in Venice. He did not simply reproduce Alciato’s texts but provided ‘an autonomous text which has strengths of its own … Marquale clearly aims at stylistic elaboration and enrichment, including the use of rhyme [and several metres] … He has a systematic tendency to reduce and simplify the moralising content: for Marquale, one moral message per emblem seems to suffice’ (Richard Greenwood, ‘Marquale’s Italian Version’ in Emblems in Glasgow (Glasgow: 1992), p. 58). The emblems are grouped according to their moral messages, as follows: divinity and religion, faith, prudence, strength, concord, hope, faithlessness, insanity, luxury, sloth, gluttony, astrology, love, fortune, princes, death, friendship, vengeance, peace, science, ignorance and marriage.

‘The editions of Alciati’s Emblems, issued by Rouille and Macé or Mathias Bonhomme, at Lyons, from the year 1548 up to 1516, are by far the longest and most important series ever printed, both as regards the designs and engravings of the wood-cuts, with very elaborate borders on every page, as well as the variety of the translations, and the completeness and fulness of the Emblems’ (Sears, p. 14). The engravings are by Pierre Eskrich, a Protestant engraver born in Paris. This was one of his first commissions for the Lyon printers, where he arrived in 1548, and also probably one of the last, as he is supposed to have fled to Geneva around 1550. The final section, ‘Arbori’ or trees, is made up of 11 illustrations using elegant cuts taken directly from herbals, each accompanied by a short verse. These were the last emblems to be added by Alciato to his work, which continued to grow after his death. The trees shown here are the cyprus, oak, laurel, fir, quince, holm-oak, ivy, box, willow, almond and mulberry   

This is a rare and attractive example of a mid-C16th French mosaiqué binding with painted interlaces, a style prominent in Paris from the 1550s. There are examples of Parisian bindings with geometric designs that were produced more cheaply using single metal stamps, but ours was clearly tooled by hand, and the decoration is perhaps unusually dense, with equally unusually mottled painting around the central arabesque. The interlacing of Parisian bindings was often painted black, such as those made for workshops for Thomas Wotton, the ‘English Grolier’ (Henry Davis Gift III, 36-50), though bindings with black interlaces were also likely produced in Lyon in the period (Henry Davis Gift III, 99). Coloured examples were produced for Jean Grolier in Paris (Le Bars, 50 Reliures (Paris: 2012), 34-35, 40-41) and were also produced in Italy (e.g. De Marinis, I, 844 (pl. B2)).

An edition was issued simultaneously by Rouille as part of the partnership with Bonhomme, priority not established: ‘they are … essentially the same but seem to have been issued each by its respective publisher’ (Green).

‘Figurato in legno con molta eleganza’ (Cicognara).

‘This may be called a very rare book, seldom appearing for sale on the catalogues, and, when found, generally defective and soiled’ (Sears).