Venise, Aldus Manutius, juillet 1498.
Folio; 452 leaves (including leaf 232, which is blank: signature K4), Greek, Roman, and Hebrew types. 20th-century full-leather binding with Renaissance-style blind-stamped decoration on the covers. Eighteenth-century bookplate of Prince de Soragna on title page.
310 x 209 mm.
First edition of Poliziano’s Latin works, the preeminent humanist scholar of the Florentine Renaissance.
HC 13218 ; GW M34727.IGI 7952 ; BMC V, 559 ; Goff P-886 ; Renouard, p.17, n.4 ; Ahmanson-Murphy 26; BMC V, 559; BSB-Ink P-663; CIBN P-539; Clemons and Fletcher 14; IGI 7952; ISTC ip00886000. See Shane Butler, Angelo Poliziano: Letters Vol. 1 (2006) and Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text (1994).
The texts contained here (for a complete list, see Artini’s description) constitute a cornerstone of the cultural history of the second Italian and European Quattrocento.
Among other notable items is a letter addressed to King John II of Portugal, in which he is congratulated on his conquests in Africa and his new geographical discoveries.
Poliziano, also known as Politian, began preparing this edition before his death, first with Bolognese printer Plato de Benedictis and then, after that man’s death, with Aldus.
He edited and arranged his correspondence and other writings into a “kind of history of late quattrocento humanism, one which would document for all time [his] own preeminent role” (Butler).
In addition, the sheet bearing the signature H8 contains a few Hebrew words, the first use of Hebrew characters by Aldus.
Renouard describes this edition as “one of the most beautiful to come out of the Aldine press,” and it contains Aldus’s first use of Hebrew types.
The contents offer an intimate view into the life and mind of one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, whose work “brought about a revolution in philological method” (Grafton).
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