LEONICO TOMEO, Niccolò (1456?-1531?)

Opuscula nuper in lucem aedita ... [Colophon:] Opusculorum hoc ex impressione repraesentavit Bernadinus Vitalis Venetus Anno Domini. MCCCCCXXV. Die. xxiii. Februarii. Ex Venetiis

      Venice: Bernadino Vitali, 1525. 4to: a--b4 c6 d--z4 &4 [con]4 [rum]4 A--G4 H6 I4 (blank H6), 144 leaves, ff. CXXXIX [5]. Roman and Italic letter. Title printed in red and black within a woodcut border composed of 4 blocks, several series of decorated and historiated initials, woodcut pointing fists and stylised foliage printed in the margins. Woodcut diagrams printed in the text. [bound with:] *Dialogi nunc primum in lucem editi* ... [Colophon:] Venetiis in aedibus Gregorii de Gregoriis. Mense septembri. M. D. XXIIII. *Venice:* Gregorio de Gregori, 1524. 4to: a--z4 (blank z4), 92 leaves, ff. XC [2]. Italic letter with Roman headlines. Leaf size and condition: 210 x 141mm. Sig. I of the first work, an extensive errata list, evidently printed on inferior paper and heavily browned. Fine fresh and clean copies. Binding: Contemporary Venetian blind stamped brown morocco, traces of 4 ties, green edges, MS lettering 'MechaniceArist' on lower edges, later label and place and date added at foot of spine. Joints and corners repaired. Provenance and annotation: Contemporary signature 'Io: Ant Rossenius' on title; small nineteenth-century book label of Jacobi Manzoni; bookplate of Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt (1836--1925), physican, inventor of the clinical thermometer and a source for the character of Lydgate in George Eliot's Middlemarch; Dawsons of Pall Mall cost code; Walter Pagel (1896--1983); B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: EDIT16 CNCE 37974 and 52834; Adams L 502 and 507; Opuscula only: Durling 2794; Wellcome 3744. First editions. Reprinted in a collective volume in 1530 § The Opuscula is a collection of commentaries on Aristotle's De animalium motu, De animalium incessu, and Mechanica (with the text), and an extract from Proclus' commentary on Plato's Timaeus. The most important to an early owner was apparently the Mechanica as this is the title used to identify the volume lettered on the lower page edges. The Mechanica has woodcut diagrams illustrating mechanical principles: remarkably, the lever is illustrated by a pair of dental forceps. The other tracts in the Opuscula are on animal motion; and the physiology of sex, considered both physically and psychologically. The dialogues in the second work are as follows (as listed on the verso of the titlepage): Trophonius, sive, De divinatione; Bembus, sive, De animorum immortalitate; Alverotus, sive, De tribus animorum vehiculis; Peripateticus, sive, De nominum inventione; Sannutus, sive, De compescendo luctu; Severinus, sive, De relativorum natura; Sadoletus, sive De precibus; Phoebus, sive, De aetatum moribus; Bonominus, sive, De Alica; Sannutus, sive, De ludo talario. Niccolò Leonico Tomeo was born in Venice and studied in Padua. He is credited with giving the first formal lectures on Plato at Padua in 1497, and from the Greek text rather than from a Latin translation. Beautifully printed with some fine initials, these two works were evidently bound together close to the time of printing in a typical Venetian binding of blind-stamped morocco. The binding is well preserved with only minor repairs and has an amusing nineteenth-century provenance having belonged to George Eliot's Dr Lydgate. Literature: M. E. Ring, 'The first picture of a dental forceps in a printed book', Journal of the California Dental Association 32 (2004), 235--237.