GIOVIO, Paolo; Giovio, Paulo; TOBIAS STIMMER

Elogia Virorum Bellica Virtute Illustrium

      1575 STIMMER, Tobias. GIOVIO, Paolo. Elogia Virorum bellica virtute illustrium. [6], 391, [15] pp. Includes an architectural woodcut title-page, and 127 woodcut portraits, all by Tobias Stimmer, plus 10 borders without portraits. BOUND WITH: -----. Elogia Virorum literis illustrium. [12], 232 (i.e. 228), [4] pp. Includes an architectural woodcut title-page and 63 portraits. Folio, 325 x 210 mm, bound by Birdsall in nineteenth-century olive morocco, gilt, a.e.g. Basel: Petri Pernae, 1575. First Edition with the famous Stimmer portraits. Jakob Burckhardt describes these Stimmer woodcuts as "the first comprehensive and generally accessible source for the likeness of persons in whom the contemporary learned public was interested." The portraits themselves measure 110 x 85 mm, and are inset into large figurative ornamental frames, the whole measuring 160 x 150 mm. There are six different frames for the 200 portraits, one of them with a large figure of an American Indian. The printer, Peter Perna, commissioned the renowned Swiss artist to travel to Como and make the original portrait sketches based on models in Giovio's own collection. This museum was the most renowned portrait collection of the Renaissance. The biographies and portraits in the first work include a number of Sforza and Visconti dukes, Romulus, Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Tammerlane, Cosimo de'Medici, the explorers Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Cortez, the humanists Scanderberg and Scaliger, plus fine portraits of Henry VIII of England, James V of Scotland, François I of France, Charles V of Germany, and several portraits of Turkish rulers and emperors. The second work includes biographies and portraits of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Lorenzo de'Medici, Andreas Naugerius, Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, Erasmus, and many others. Although the authors of the laudatory poems are not credited in the text proper, the "Index Poetarum" lists, i.a., Aldus Manutius, Bembo, Julius Gonzaga, Plantin, Ariosto, and other famous Renaissance scholars. Although this copy lacks the second preliminary leaf (A2), containing a 28-line dedication by the printer to Francesco I (Grand Duke of Tuscany), and a woodcut portrait of the author, this same woodcut reappears later in the volume, opposite page 1 of the Elogia Virorum literis illustrium. Interestingly, Houghton Library possesses two copies of the work, one with, and one without, the above mentioned leaf. A washed copy. Lipperheide 484. Adams G-644. Thöne, Stimmer 30-37. Brunet III, 584. Bietenholz, Der Italienische Humanismus...in Basel 85. See Mortimer, Italian 213.