VICO, Enea.
WITH THE EXTRA ENGRAVINGS TO MARGINS
Ex libris XXIII commentariorum in vetera imperatorum Romanorum numismata.
Venice, Aldus, 1560£2,450.00
FIRST EDITION. 4to. pp. 130 (xiv). Roman letter. Very finely etched t-p and frontispiece portrait of Julius Caesar, 4 ll. of full-page etchings printed recto and verso showing coins, one further full-page etching showing sacrificial utensils, good, strong impressions, duplicate engravings of coins from the 4 ll. of etched plates tipped onto margins, but without the arms of Vico sometimes pasted to verso of t-p. Woodcut printer’s device before index, woodcut initials, typographical head- and tailpieces. Occasional contemp. marginal ms. annotations, textual corrections and pagination, in a neat, C16 hand. Slight waterstaining to engraved title, only a small area visible, portion of lower margin excised just touching engraving. Margins occasionally lightly foxed, a very good, well margined copy in contemp. vellum.
First edition of this finely illustrated and printed numismatic work on the coins of the reign of Julius Caesar by the sculptor and numismatist Enea Vico (1523-67), extra-illustrated with the engravings of coins apparently pasted in the margins during printing; of the library copies that we have traced only a couple mention these additional mounted engravings. Vico’s life of Caesar is followed by the engraved plates of coins, which are numbered and correspond to the ensuing descriptions, which Vico peppers with literary quotations in Latin and Greek, mostly from Virgil’s Aeneid, but also from Horace, Ovid, Porphyry, Martial, Homer and Hesiod. The historical material is largely supported by long quotations from Livy, Cassius Dio, Plutarch and Suetonius.
It is to these sections that the extra engravings have been added, so that the illustrations of each coin are matched to their physical descriptions in the text. Following the biography, the coins constitute an episodic life of Caesar, beginning with the civil war, the flight of Pompey, the Pontic war with Pharnaces, victory against Pompey in Spain, etc., and finishing with Caesar’s assassination, which occurred around the same time as coins issued by Q. Voconius Vitulus, which are rather mundanely used to illustrate this pivotal event in Roman history. The aftermath of Caesar’s death is also described, with a coin showing a crocodile being used to illustrate Augustus’s conquest of Egypt, and another showing four elephants drawing a triumphal chariot. A longer disquisition on elephants features in the section on Caesar’s war with the Numidian king Juba, which ends with a description of sacrificial implements used in Roman religion, illustrated with an engraving.
Enea Vico was born in Parma and worked in Ferrara, producing engravings on behalf of Cosimo I Medici and the Duke of Ferrara. The dedication here is to Pope Pius IV.
Ren. 181: 17: ‘Dans quelques exemplaires, on trouve les gravures des médailles répétées et collées séparément en tête de chaque article, dans un espace blanc qui paroit avoir été reserve exprès, ce qui a exigé l’emploi de deux exemplaires de plus de ces médailles gravées. Les armes de Vico, gravées en taille-douce sont, dans Presque tous les exemplaires … collées au verso du titre …’
USTC 863209. EDIT 16 CNCE 49114. Adams V 637. BM STC It., p. 723. Ahmanson-Murphy 627. Kallendorff & Wells 422. Brunet, V, 1175. OCLC finds copies at Getty, Yale, UPenn and the Pierpont Morgan in the US.