HERBARIUS, Italian

Herbolario volgare , nel quale le virtu de le herbe, & molti altri simplici se dechiarano, con alcune belle aggionte nouame[n]te di latino in volgare tradutto. [Colophon:] per Gioanni Andrea Vauassore detto Guadagnino et fratelli. Nel anno. 1534. Adi. 15. Novembrio

      Venice: Giovanni Adrea Valvassore detto Guadagnino et fratelli, 1534. 8vo: aa6 A--X8, Y6, 180 leaves, ff.[6], Cap. 1--151, ff. [23]. Gothic letter. Woodcut initials, woodcut printer's device on last leaf, verso blank; woodcut of 2 saints on title, full page woodcut of the Madonna and Child with musicians on aa6v; and 151 three-quarter page text woodcuts. Leaf size and condition: 155 x 104mm. Leaves D6, M5, O5 and R1 supplied from another copy and remargined; titlepage worn and soiled; the rest of the book waterstained and with some soiling but still fresh. Binding: Late nineteenth-century half vellum. Provenance and annotation: About 30 words of contemporary annotation. Walter Pagel (1896--1983) with signature on pastedown; B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: Edit16 CNCE 22579; Hunt 34; Klebs--Becher 16; Nissen 2317. Third edition in Italian of the Latin Herbarius of 1484 (first Italian edition, Venice 1522, second 1526; there were another 7 sixteenth-century editions). § The Latin Herbarius, first printed in 1484, was the prototype of all the herbals printed in the fifteenth and the first part of the sixteenth centuries. It is an anonymous compilation of classical and Arabic authors describing and illustrating 150 plants in the first part, and the drugs derived from them in the second. This rare Italian edition is a new translation, different from that of 1522, and illustrated with a new series of woodcuts. These were not used again in any other publication, though they were copied for the 1539 and three following editions of the Herbarius in Italian. In all the Italian editions the traditional chapter 89, on Matricaria, is replaced by a chapter on honey, and a new chapter numbered 151, on wine and vinegar, has been added.