Beschreibung:

PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius (23-79). Historia Naturalis. Edited and with a letter by Philippus Beroaldus (1453-1505). Parma: Stephanus Corallus, 1476.
PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius (23-79). Historia Naturalis. Edited and with a letter by Philippus Beroaldus (1453-1505). Parma: Stephanus Corallus, 1476. Royal 2 o (382 x 253 mm). Collation: [1 1 2 2 8 3-8 1 0 9 1 2 10-15 1 0 16 8 17-27 1 0 28 6 29-30 1 0 31-35 8 36 1 0 37 8 38 4 ] (1/1 blank, 1/2 Pliny the Younger's letter to Marcus and Tacitus, and citations from Suetonius, Tertullian and Eusebius of Caesarea, 1/3v blank, 1/4r Book I: author's dedication to Domitian, 1/5r tables and indices, 2/8v blank, 3/1 Book 2, 37/8r colophon, Beroaldus letter to Ravacaldus, 38/3r and 38/4 blank). 356 leaves (of 358, lacks first and last blank). 50 lines, table in two columns. Type: 1:111R. CONTEMPORARY PENWORK INITIALS BY A DUTCH ARTIST including 37 12-line initials opening each book, of red, blue, and green with red or purple penwork infill and marginal extensions, some with grotesque or reversed ornaments, 2-line Lombard initials in alternating red and blue, red paragraph marks and capital strokes, catchword on each leaf. (28/5 torn crossing text and neatly repaired.) 18th-century English calf gilt, gilt coat-of-arms on sides, spine gilt in 7 compartments, gilt-lettered morocco spine label in second, crown cipher in eighth (joints with early repair, upper joint starting.) Provenance : Viscount Bernard Léonard du Bus de Gisignies (1808-1874), Belgian politician, ornithologist and paleontologist (coat-of-arms with motto "Finis laborum palma" on sides; his sale Brussels, Olivier, 28 March 1876); T.J. Coolidge (bookplate); acquired from David O'Neal, 1984. Fifth Edition, reprinted from the edition of Jenson, Venice, 1472, printed at the second press at Parma, and an outstanding example of early Italian typography. The fruit of an inexhaustible curiosity, the Historia naturalis is Pliny's only extant work. As he says in the preface, no Greek by himself had compiled an encylopedia of the whole of nature, and no Roman had done so by himself or with others. By his own account, the 37 books contained 20,000 facts compiled from over 100 sources. These include such curiosities as the skeleton of the monster to which Andromeda was first exposed, exhibited at Rome, the tricks that elephants were taught, the perils to which sponge divers were exposed, the coracles of the British, and the first introduction of barbers to Italy. The sections on the history of painting and sculpture provide the earliest known history of art, and the rich illustrations of Roman life reveal Pliny to have been a vigorous critic of contemporary man as well as an enthusiastic admirer of nature. The first edition of the first important scientific text appear in print in Venice in 1469. All of the 18 recorded incunable editions were printed in Italy. RARE: according to American Book Prices Current , no other copy of this work (and only 3 books from this press) sold at auction in at least 35 years. BMC VII:939; Goff P-790; GW M34300; HC 13091; Proctor 6842.