Valeriano Bolzani, Giovanni Piero

Hieroglyphica, Sive De Sacris Aegyptiorum, Aliarumque Gentium Literis Commentarii. a Celio Augustino Curione Duobis Libris Auctii, & Multis Imaginibus Illustrati

      Basel (Thomas Guarinus), March, 1575. (10)ff., 12pp., 13-441ff., 25ff. Woodcut title-page vignette, splendid full-page portrait by Tobias Stimmer in elaborate ornamental frame, and 273 woodcut illus. Lettrines and schematic figs. in text. Stout folio. Contemporary calf, handsomely blindstamped with fillets and oval device at the center of each cover; handsome seventeenth-century calligraphed paper labels on spine, lettered in red and black. A book of pivotal importance in late Renaissance iconography, first published in Basel, 1556; the present edition follows that of 1567, which was the first to contain the two additional books by Caelio Augustino Curio. Dedicated to Cosimo I de' Medici, Valeriano's “Hieroglyphica” is “a vast compilation of all the hieroglyphic knowledge of his time; it drew on Horapollo, the ‘Physiologus, ' the obelisks he saw in Rome, the Cabala and the Bible as sources. It was so popular that eleven editions were published in the first seventy years. At the time it was believed that hieroglyphs were a purely ideographical form of writing used by ancient Egyptian priests to foreshadow divine ideas, and that the Greek philosophers had tapped into ‘hieroglyphic wisdom. ' In the dedication of his ‘Hieroglyphica, ' Valeriano writes, ‘[To] speak hieroglyphically is nothing else but to disclose the true nature of things divine and human. He contributed no revolutionary ideas to the field, but his compilation was instrumental in changing the study of hieroglyphic symbols from a philosophical to a philological pursuit” (Funk). Valeriano (1477-1558) was Vasari's Latin teacher, and tutor to Giovanni de' Medici (the future Pope Leo X); in 1509, as the private secretary of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, he travelled to Rome, where he studied the city's antiquities. The “Hieroglyphica” provided a fountain of emblematic imagery for leading artists, while the inscriptions in his historical material were utilized by humanist historians. It was unquestionably the most important source for Ripa's...