Theocritus.

Idyllia, hoc est parva poemata XXXVI. Eiusdem epigrammata XIX. Eiusdem Bipennis & Ala.

      Venice: Apud Salamandram. , 1539 - woodcut device to title and last leaf, faint toning in places, title lightly spotted, two ink ownership inscriptions to title (Pinsonneau and ?S. Genovesa Parisiensis?) and one to initial blank (Dampier), ff. 77, [1], 8vo., late eighteenth-century diced russia, boards bordered with a gilt fillet, backstrip with four raised bands between gilt fillets, second and fifth compartments gilt-lettered direct, turn-ins gilt, marbled endpapers, front joint cracked but strong, joints and corners slightly rubbed, bookplates of Chatsworth and Thomas Dampier, good Textually a reprint of the 1516 Kallierges edition of the idylls of Theocritus (including the famous poems printed in the shape of an axe and angel?s wings), this edition is notable for having the first appearance of its striking printer?s device, showing a crowned salamander surrounded by flames. The device represented several printers ?at the sign of the salamander? in Venice, including Zanetti (who printed this volume, and whose name appears in the colophon) and later Scottus and several others, who often remained anonymous behind it (c.f. Bernstein, ?The Burning Salamander?, Notes 42, 1986). EDIT16 and BMSTC list this text volume together with the scholia, which Zanetti also reprinted from the Kallierges edition in 1539, as a single work, but there is more evidence that they were issued separately: EDIT16 maintains a separate listing for the scholia volume on its own, Adams does not list the scholia volume at all, and a number of the EDIT16- and BMSTC-listed holdings are for only one of the volumes. This copy was in the library of the Abbey of Saint Genevieve in Paris, which was dissolved during the French Revolution (and turned into the Lycée Henri-IV). Its book collections were preserved and nationalised as the ?Bibliothèque de Panthéon? - and twenty-five years later renamed back to Sainte Geneviève - but this volume was acquired, most likely during that upheaval, by the noted book collector Thomas Dampier (1749-1812), bishop of Ely, who had the binding made; his important collection of early books was sold after his death to the sixth Duke of Devonshire, greatly enriching the collections at Chatsworth House. (CNCE 30430; BMSTC 667; Adams T462) [Attributes: Hard Cover]