BOCCACCIO Giovanni De mulieribus claris.

First edition in Italian translated by Vincenzo Bagli, of the first work devoted exclusively to illustrious women. Illustrated with 105 beautiful woodcuts.

This beautiful Venetian edition is illustrated with a large title vignette (113 x 95 mm) depicting the triumph of famous women, with Lucretia at the head of a chariot drawn by two griffins, and 104 woodcuts (60 x 73 mm) of female portraits, full-length, some with their attributes. The models used by the engraver were statues and reliefs by the Milanese sculptor Cristoforo Solari, known as Il Gobbo, and the Venetian brothers Tullio and Antonio Lombardo, which adorn the famous funeral monument to Doge Andrea Vendramin.

The printing technique of these illustrations is very interesting. « For the portraits of individual women not only are the same figures made to do duty more than once — a nude holding an apple serves both for Eve and Venus — but a further economy was effected by cutting out a square in the blocks and inserting the same heads on different bodies or vice versa. It is surprising to find such tricks played in a fairly well printed book of this class » Warner, George, Descriptive Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts in the Library of C. W. Dyson Perrins, 1914.

“La plupart des figures sont tirées avec deux blocs, l’un contenant le corps du personnage à partir des épaules, l’autre superposé au premier, et contenant la tête et l’attache du buste; de telle sorte que le même bloc, par l’adaptation d’une tête ou d’une autre, sert à représenter différentes femmes.’ (Essling)

A few rare foxing spots and stains; trimmed a little short at the top.

Provenance : Ing. Roberto Almagia (1884-1962), Geographer and lecturer at the University of Rome from 1915 to 1959 (book plate).