{"title":"Illustrated Wonders","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA rigorously assembled selection of antiquarian books documenting the visual culture of the early modern period. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"cursus-theologicus","title":"Cursus Theologicus","description":"\u003cp\u003eBrevi \u0026amp; Clara Methodo In Tres Partes \u0026amp; Sex Tomulos Early 18th-century vellum binding with curious provenance. Theological Course in a Brief and Clear Method, in Three Parts and Six Volumes Contemporary Vellum Koln (Coloniae Agrippinae) Joannis Schlebusch n\/a - sold as binding Binding in vellum, richly tooled in blind with floral motifs and ornaments, in part designed as strings of pearls. The central panels of both covers display a small decorative medallion. The binding was originally fitted with two clasps: one is still present and functional, the other is partially damaged. The edges are painted blue. From the very beginnings of book history, Bibles and sacred texts often bore splendid bindings: their covers, lavishly adorned, emphasized the importance of the content and were meant as acts of devotion.  For this reason, they were preserved in the church treasury rather than the library, considered part of the liturgical apparatus. Even sacred works intended for private use were frequently given elaborate bindings, executed with costly and precious materials. Such is the case of this binding in vellum, richly decorated and with partial clasps - with a curious provenance. An ex-libris and stamp read Bibliothek des Kapuzinerklosters Eichstätt, tracing the book’s provenance to the Capuchin monastery founded in the seventeenth century. There, the friars assembled a working library to support preaching, pastoral care, and study. Over time, the collection grew into a remarkable repository of theology, philosophy, history, and the natural sciences, reflecting both the order’s intellectual pursuits and the cultural currents of the region. Following the monastery’s closure in the twentieth century, stewardship of the library passed to the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. This volume is probably a survivor of the 2007 “incident” that provoked considerable controversy in Germany: it emerged that the University library had pulped 80 tons of books and journals, including roughly a quarter of the 300,000 volumes of philosophy and theology originally donated by chapuchin monasteries of Bavaria for inclusion in the University library’s collections. An inquiry commissioned by the Government of the Free State of Bavaria eventually concluded that no valuable works had been discarded or destroyed. The binding and story of trhis book mirror each other: on the outside, a vellum cover tooled with pearls, floral flourishes, and medallions, meant to proclaim devotion as much as to protect the text. On the inside, a provenance that carries it from Capuchin shelves to university vaults, narrowly surviving the great “book pulping scandal” of 2007. It is at once an artifact of faith, artistry, and controversy: a survivor with style.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46922137272555,"sku":"00012025000","price":250.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/025_001_bright.jpg?v=1758323876"},{"product_id":"east-of-the-sun-and-west-of-the-moon-old-tales-from-the-north-asbjornsen","title":"East Of The Sun And West Of The Moon. Old Tales From The North","description":"\u003cp\u003eA luminous blend of Norwegian folklore and jewel-like, sinuous Art Nouveau plates. Orignal Illustrated Cloth London Hodder \u0026amp; Stoughton Pp. xv, 284, [2]. Dark yellow fabric hard cover, with title at spine and illustration at front cover in blue and black. Spine partially damaged. Folio A4 missing (between title page and first page, probably white). Illustration on p. 19 misplaced at p. 21 - resulting in a blank page at 19, as issued by the publisher. 24 beautiful colored illustration (in the pagination) on free leaves glued to the respective papers manually. Many b\/w illustrations in the text, and decorative elements. A very subtle and uniform browning. Very beautiful copy. Reference: Grolier Children’s 100, 66. Richard Dalby, The Golden Age of Children’s Book Illustration, 2002. One of the great fairy tales of Northern Europe, East of the Sun and West of the Moon has enchanted readers for centuries with its blend of romance, adventure, and myth. Rooted in Norwegian folklore, it tells the story of a young girl who follows a white bear to a distant castle, discovers his hidden identity, and sets out on a perilous quest to rescue him, traveling - as the title suggests - to a land beyond imagination. This early 1920s edition is brought vividly to life through the luminous illustrations of Kay Nielsen, the celebrated Danish artist of the Golden Age of book illustration. Nielsen’s work, with its sinuous lines, jewel-like colors, and dreamlike Nordic atmosphere, gave the tale its definitive visual form and secured his reputation alongside Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. His plates for this story are among the most iconic of his career, marrying Art Nouveau elegance with a distinctly Scandinavian sense of wonder. First published in 1914, this beautiful volume has been reprinted many times up to the present day. Nielsen’s unique style and talent for combining the eerie and fantastic with beautiful decorative effect was at its peak with this set of illustrations (Dalby, p. 90).  A classic of fairy-tale literature and illustration history, this edition stands as both a testament to the enduring power of folklore and a showcase of Nielsen’s genius at the height of his career. This book feels like a fairy tale twice over: once in the story itself, and again in the way it’s illustrated. The moment you open it, you step into Nielsen’s jewel-like dreamscape, where every line curves like a spell and every color seems to glow from within. It is both a familiar and a strange experience: an old Norwegian tale made modern by one of the great illustrators of the Golden Age. Fairy tales survive, wander, and get retold- and sometimes, like this volume, they come down to us with their own story etched into their very pages.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46922137370859,"sku":"00012025000","price":580.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/028_005_bright.jpg?v=1758323890"},{"product_id":"le-cabinet-de-sainte-genevieve-molinet-ertinger-1692","title":"Le Cabinet de la Bibliotheque de Sainte Genevieve","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eDivisé en deux parties. Contenant les antiquitez de la réligion des Chrétiens, des Egyptiens, \u0026amp; des Romains. (...) Des Animaux les plus rares (...), des Coquilles (...), des Fruit etrangers (...) 1692 First Edition The Cabinet of the Library of Saint Geneviève [1] frontispiece; [1] title-page; [1] Molinet's portrait. Pp. [6], 224, [8]; 45 table plates outside the pagination, including 4 double-page plates. Contemporary vellum, minor staining; inner hinge of the front cover slightly damaged, but solid. Ownership signature and very small stamp at the title page. 2 frontispieces, portrait of Molinet, and 45 plates, all fresh and crisp, with very wide margins. An excellent, well-preserved copy with superb and richly detailed engravings. Reference: Nissen ZBI 2861; Tchmerzine Livres figurés du XVII Siècle p. 143. 16 1\/2 x 11 x 1 3\/4 French Forty-five plates to document one of the first museums and libraries, still shimmering with Baroque wunderkammer flair. A sumptuous and richly illustrated description of the Cabinet de curiosités and library of the Abbey of Sainte Geneviève in Paris; founded n the 6th century, it was one of the earliest Parisian cabinets that blended erudition, material culture, and library practice, placing Sainte-Geneviève among the great centers of learning before the Revolution. It is today across the square from the Panthéon, administered by La Sorbonne. During the Mediaeval ages the Library was already famous throughout Europe; after some difficult times during the Wars of Religions, the library was brought back to life beginning in 1619, during the reign of Louis XIII, by Cardinal Francois de Rochefoucauld, who donated six hundred volumes from his personal collection. In 1673, Claude Du Molinet became librarian and founded a small museum, the Cabinet of Curiosities, with Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, medals, rare minerals and stuffed animals, within the library. By 1687 the library possessed twenty thousand books, and four hundred manuscripts. This volume, curated by Du Molinet himself, represents one of the most important testimonies to early modern collecting and the origins of museography. The first part of the volume is devoted to antiquities, while the second focuses on natural history. It presents a comprehensive survey of the abbey’s holdings. The plates, engraved in fine taille-douce by Franz Ertinger, depict the grand library and its cabinets filled with rare birds, fossils, coral branches, medals, engraved stones, minerals, and other marvels. The preface emphasizes the collection’s demonstrative, pedagogical, and scientific purpose, with several objects originating from the celebrated collection of the scholar Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc. Through its rigorous organization and didactic presentation, this work stands as a milestone in the history of collecting and museum studies. The Cabinet de la Bibliothèque de Sainte-Geneviève is one of the most visually sumptuous monuments of early modern scholarship. Its engravings by Franz Ertinger form a veritable museum on paper, chronicling the breadth of human curiosity at the end of the seventeenth century. Each image, both scientific and poetic, reveals the meticulous arrangement of Claude Du Molinet’s cabinet de curiosités, a harmonious dialogue between art, faith, and natural philosophy. Among the most impressive plates, the first seven (many in double-page format) offer panoramic views of the library and museum as they appeared: breathtaking galleries lined with bookshelves; cabinets of antiquities, specimens, and curiosities; every object placed with intention, every species rendered with accuracy and grace, reflecting both scientific observation and Baroque wonder. A total of forty-five copperplate engravings methodically explains the collections of Sainte-Geneviève, including medals and hundreds of ancient coins; antiquities and religious objects; exotic marvels such as a lizard from Brazil, the horns of rhinoceros, giraffe, and “unicorn,” a mandrake root shaped like a human figure, a so-called “mermaid’s hand,” and fossilized shells and corals, together with rare birds, fish, shells, and coral branches. Each plate is both an artwork and an intellectual map, a microcosm of the universal order Molinet sought to represent. Claude Du Molinet (1620-1687). French historian, antiquarian, and librarian, especially renowned for his historical and numismatic knowledge. He was the official librarian of the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève from 1675 to 1687; he published a few works, but left above all a large number of manuscripts, most of which are currently kept in the reserve collection of the Sainte-Geneviève library. His masterpiece, The Cabinet of the Library of Sainte Geneviève, is a landmark work documenting one of the earliest museums of art, nature, and science, uniting faith and curiosity in the Baroque age. A paper museum of Baroque wonder? Yes please. Molinet’s cabinet turns curiosity into museography: unicorn horns, mandrakes, strange birds and fish, Egyptian relics, classical ruins, fossils, and minerals all staged with theatrical poise - and with the same earnest seriousness. A seventeenth-century world tour in engravings, plus a few enchanting panoramic views of a four-centuries-old library: we can't resist.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria LLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47138687451371,"sku":"69-1692--5800-3046-2025","price":5800.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/069_010_41999057-fd2b-4324-b92c-0ac5719e5422.jpg?v=1764641468"},{"product_id":"presuhn-decorations-murales-pompei-1878","title":"Les décorations murales de Pompéi; with Choix des plus belles et intéressantes peintures de Pompéi","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis magnificent volume represent one of the most important 19th-century archaeological documentations of Pompeii’s wall paintings. Émile Presuhn, a German archaeologist who lived in Italy for eight years, worked with local artists to produce exact chromolithographic copies of frescoes that in many cases have since been lost or severely deteriorated. Published by Weigel in Leipzig between 1878 and 1882, and printed by Ramboz et Schuchardt in Geneva, the work was conceived expressly for artists, industrial schools, and students of antiquity, as stated in its subtitle. The plates illustrate the full range of the four Pompeian decorative styles, from restrained geometric schemes (including the celebrated grottesche) to complex architectural fantasies populated with mythological figures, capturing both artistic quality and archaeological context.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47811296002283,"sku":"78-1878--2200-317-2025","price":2200.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/0078_IMG_6885.jpg?v=1771034492"},{"product_id":"verdizotti-giovanni-mario-cento-favole-morali-1577","title":"Cento favole morali","description":"\u003cp\u003eVerdizotti, a close associate and pupil of Titian, authored both the texts and the woodcut images for this rare but renowned collection of fables, which stands as a high point of Venetian Renaissance illustration. The volume brings together one hundred moral fables, each accompanied by its own xylographic table, drawn from ancient and more recent sources and uniting Aesopic narrative with Renaissance humanist ethics. Animals, mythological figures, and exemplary characters appear within carefully constructed landscapes that reflect the artist’s background. The work enjoyed wide circulation and lasting success, owing to both the appeal of the texts and the quality of the illustrations, and it continued to be reprinted into the later seventeenth century. The present third printing corresponds closely in form and content to the first edition of 1570 and the second of 1575.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47811296035051,"sku":"85-1577--3400-1946.23-2025","price":3400.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/0085_IMG_6849.jpg?v=1771135548"},{"product_id":"bocchi-symbolicarum-quaestionum-1574","title":"Symbolicarum quaestionum de universo genere","description":"\u003cp\u003eQuas serious ludebat, libri quinque. Emblems or Symbolic Questions, of different kinds, which the author played seriously, in five books. 1574 Second Edition Pp. [1] f.e., [48], CCCLVII, [1], [1] r.e. Bononiae (Bologna) Apud Societatem Typographiae Bononiensis Contemporary yapp binding in limp vellum, with a gilt double fillet border and foliate corner pieces to the boards; the smooth spine is divided by five double fillets enclosing four floral rosettes. Some expected rubbing to the edges and spine, particularly at head and foot. The title page bears a circular ink stamp ex-libris of Pasquale Oliva, 1976, and a second armorial ex-libris label of the Lamberti family with the motto \"Cosa fatta capo ha\"; a third ex-libris appears on the front pastedown, for Malesci, with the motto \"Silendo volo\", signed by the artist B. Bartoccini, 1990. A fresh, wide-margined, clean copy in excellent condition throughout. Achille Bocchi's Symbolicarum Quaestionum de Universo Genere is one of the most intellectually ambitious emblem books of the sixteenth century. First published in Bologna in 1555 at Bocchi's own Nova Academica Bocchiana press, the work appears here in its second and final edition of 1574 — the first publication issued by the newly founded Società Tipografica Bolognese. The title announces its programme through the phrase serio ludere — playing seriously — a humanist ideal in the spirit of Horace's Ars Poetica, placing the work within a tradition that includes Erasmus's Adagia and the emblem literature inaugurated by Alciati's Emblemata of 1531. Bocchi's relation to Alciati was one of intellectual kinship: the Syntagma index records at p. 87 the dedication Ad Andream Alciatum amicorum optimum - to Andrea Alciati, best of friends - an explicit homage to the founder of the genre embedded within the body of the work itself. Symbolic literature is treated here not as light diversion but as a vehicle for theology, philosophy, moral inquiry, and philology, structured across four formal classes as the Syntagma makes clear. The visual programme is equally distinguished. The 151 full-page copperplate engravings were executed by Giulio Bonasone after designs principally by Prospero Fontana, with some attributed to Parmigianino. Bonasone, who is believed to have trained with Marcantonio Raimondi, brought to the plates a formal elegance well suited to Bocchi's allegorical register. For this 1574 edition, the plates were retouched throughout by Agostino Carracci — then seventeen years old and at the very beginning of his career as an engraver — who also appears to have newly engraved plate I in copper, replacing the woodcut that had served in the 1555 printing. The occurrence of first and second states varies from copy to copy, making precise collation complex, as noted by Ruth Mortimer. A further biographical thread connects the artists: Prospero Fontana, who provided the majority of the designs, later opened the Bolognese painting school attended by the young Carracci cousins, making the Symbolicarum Quaestionum a small but telling document in the formation of that tradition. The work comprises five books and 151 emblems, each furnished with a Latin or Greek title, an individual dedication, a verse epigram, and a full-page copperplate illustration. The complete scholarly apparatus is present in this copy, including the Syntagma — a thematic index distributing all 151 emblems across four classes: theological and metaphysical emblems; natural philosophy; ethics, governance, and exemplary conduct; rhetoric, dialectic, and language. Greek formulae pervade the scholarly apparatus, and the four-class structure draws on Aristotelian categories, while the emblems themselves engage extensively with mythographic and Neoplatonic traditions (the two strands running in productive parallel rather than strict philosophical alignment, in a manner typical of the Bolognese university milieu). The dedicatees map the intellectual geography of mid-sixteenth-century Italy: Cosimo I de' Medici receives the opening emblem Sapientiae species inenarrabilis; other dedicatees include Andrea Alciato, Farnese and Sforza family members, alongside civic emblems such as the city of Bologna. Among the most visually pleasing images are the moral ones, addressing governance, avarice, patience, ambition, and military virtue alongside classical exempla. A work of exceptional scholarly completeness, representing one of the summits of the Renaissance emblem tradition in its most refined printed form. Humanist gems on paper: Bocchi turns theology, myth, and philosophy into emblems, while Parmigianino and a teenage Agostino Carracci show their mastery on some plates, engraved by Giulio Bonasone on designs by Fontana.  Serious play (quoting the title page), and utterly our weakness.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48097442234603,"sku":"83-1574--2100-1470-46109.7256944444","price":2100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/0083_IMG_7363copy.jpg?v=1776195748"},{"product_id":"maggi-nuova-racolta-di-fontane-che-1645","title":"Nuova racolta di fontane","description":"\u003cp\u003eche si vedano nel alma citta di Roma, Tivoli e Frascati\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA new collection of the fountains seen in the venerable city of Rome, Tivoli and Frascati. 1645\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst Edition\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[3] f.e., [29] leaves with 45 total plates (32 on 16 leaves and 13 full-page), [3] r.e. Roma Gio. Giacomo de Rossi, alla Pace all'insegna di Parigi\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModern calf binding with blind fillet, some rubbing and abrasion; endpapers renewed. Light toning and occasional foxing, with slight finger stains. Pale contemporary ink annotations appear in the margins of almost all leaves, possibly early manuscript numeration. Paper with a fleur-de-lys watermark in a circle surmounted by the letter M. A small circular red-brown unidentified collector's stamp is present in the lower outer margin of several plates, and a pencilled inventory number at the opening. Very good copy, with strong, well-inked impressions of the etchings and ample margins.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis composite suite of fountain and garden plates belongs to the culture of the seventeenth-century Roman print album, preceding Falda's fountain series of the 1670s. Presented as a print collection, it serves as a visual vade mecum for the water architecture of Rome, Tivoli, and Frascati, and in the process it captures fascinating details of contemporary life, with little figures from every social class passing by the fountains. The engravers who signed the suite are Giovanni Maggi, Francesco Corduba, Dominique Barrière, and Louis (Ludovicus) Rouhier, though the plates are not the work of a single signed hand. The composition of the book is that of a publisher's palimpsest: older copperplates (several dated 1618, the year of Giovanni Maggi's death) were gathered and reissued beneath a fresh engraved title. That dating is conventional, based on the dedicatee and on the states of the constituent plates, which are dated from 1618 to c. 1623 (ref.: Berlin, Katalog der Ornamentstichsammlung, 3599).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe volume contains 45 original etchings on 29 sheets, including the engraved allegorical title page depicting the Capitoline Wolf with Romulus and Remus, and the personification of the River Tiber, within an architectural frame featuring a fountain and the armorial bearings of the dedicatee, Andrea Corsini. It comprises 32 etchings printed on 16 sheets and 13 full-page etchings. The sequence opens with the city fountains of Rome: Piazza San Pietro; the Acqua Felice, recording the dedication of the monument to Sixtus V; the twin granite basins of Piazza Farnese; the Mattei Fountain, or Fontana delle Tartarughe; and the Marforio. The collection proceeds through the most celebrated fountains of the period, each represented with the life unfolding around it, adding warmth and charm to the splendid monuments: children at play, adults going about their business, and dogs wandering the streets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is simply everyday life unfolding in the margins of a seventeenth-century collection of prints devoted to the fountains of Rome. Three bird's-eye prospects close the volume: the Giardino Mattei, the Giardino del Cardinale Montalto, the Peretti Villa near Termini, and the plan of the Villa d'Este after Duperac, keyed to thirty-five fountains. A feast for art lovers, but also for anyone who delights in the small details of everyday life. The fountains may be the stars of these magnificent etchings, yet our eyes keep wandering to the margins: children at play, dogs trotting by, people at work, chance encounters unfolding in the streets. You can imagine yourself walking the streets of Seventeenth-century Rome, one delightful detail at a time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49048619581675,"sku":"146-1645--2250-693.4725-2026","price":2250.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00146_IMG_8743.jpg?v=1784006507"},{"product_id":"segato-atlante-monumentale-del-1837","title":"Atlante monumentale del Basso e dell'Alto Egitto","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eIllustrato dal prof. Domenico Valeriani e compilato dal fu Girolamo Segato con disegni tratti dalle opere di Denon, della Commissione Francese, di Gau, di Caillaud e di Rosellini e con quelli dallo stesso compilatore eseguiti sul luogo. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eMonumental Atlas of Lower and Upper Egypt illustrated by Prof. D. Valeriani and compiled by the late G. Segato, with drawings taken from the works of Denon, the French Commission, Gau, Cailliaud, and with those executed on site by the compiler himself \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003e1837 \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eVol. I: leaves [1] f.e., [2], [65] plates, [1] r.e.; Vol. II: [1] f.e., [2], [95] plates, [1] r.e. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eFirenze Nello stabilimento posto nei Fondacci di S. Spirito N.° 1993 \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eContemporary half leather over marbled paper-covered boards, spine gilt-decorated with raised bands. The binding shows wear to the corners and extremities, with well-executed repairs and restoration. Light foxing throughout, with some localized heavier spotting. The hand-coloured plates retain their original period coloring in excellent condition. A large-format atlas with binding wear, but internally preserving its magnificent plates. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eSecond edition (first published in 1835) of one of the most ambitious and lavishly illustrated nineteenth-century surveys of Egypt, uniting archaeology, topography, and landscape in a monumental atlas published at the height of Europe's fascination with the Nile. Conceived by the explorer, chemist, and antiquarian Girolamo Segato (1792-1836), the work grew out of his travels through Egypt and Nubia after 1818, where, together with the engineer Lorenzo Masi, he explored and surveyed territories extending beyond Wadi Halfa along the Blue and White Nile, regions then only imperfectly known to European scholarship. Rather than limiting itself to the celebrated monuments of the lower Nile, the atlas sought to assemble a comprehensive visual record of Egypt's ancient remains, architecture, landscapes, and antiquities, combining Segato's own field drawings with material derived from the great Egyptological expeditions of Denon, Gau, Cailliaud, Rosellini, and the French scientific commission. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eFollowing Segato's death in 1836, the work was reissued under the direction of Professor Domenico Valeriani, whose name appears alongside that of the late Segato on the title page. In that occasion, two octavo text volumes were also issued under the title Nuova illustrazione istorico-monumentale del Basso e dell'Alto Egitto, sometimes preserved together with the present Atlas. The atlas contains 160 engraved plates (numbered 1-99, with numerous plates bis, ter, etc.), including 8 double-page plates, 45 hand-colored plates (among them four of the six maps), approximately 150 aquatints devoted principally to landscapes, monuments, and city views, and approximately 150 etchings depicting costumes, animals, plants, antiquities, and architectural details. Among the most striking views is the magnificent Cairo during the Nile Flood, one of the finest panoramas of the series, but the colored depictions of objects, mummies, wall paintings are particularly striking and charming. The visual journey begins in Alexandria, with topographical plans, harbour views, and the celebrated Pianta della Città del Cairo, before following the Nile southward through Egypt. Funerary monuments and burial customs give way to the pyramids of Abu Sir, El-Lahun, and Meidum, shown in plans, elevations, and sections, while the great temple complexes of Dendera, Latopolis, Luxor, Karnak, and Thebes are documented through architectural surveys of façades, columns, capitals, ceilings, reliefs, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Interspersed throughout are portraits of Coptic monks after Denon, studies of scarabs, amulets, funerary figures, ornaments, and other antiquities, together with scenes of contemporary Egyptian life. One particularly evocative group of plates, devoted to the desert route between Qena and Quseir, records not monuments but survival itself: water-carriers at a well, desert vegetation, and even a flea are observed with the same documentary precision as the ancient ruins. The atlas concludes with views of Philae, studies of Ababda costume and dwellings, and finely reproduced hieroglyphic manuscripts, including a beautifully illuminated example with red and black rubrication, bringing together archaeology, landscape, ethnography, and natural history in a single visual survey of nineteenth-century Egypt. Some books preserve information; this one preserves fascination. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eThe hand coloring alone is enough to stop us in our tracks. Rich, luminous, and astonishingly fresh, these plates preserve the sense of wonder with which nineteenth-century Europe looked upon Egypt: a land where colossal temples, painted mummies, hieroglyphs, and everyday life seemed equally worthy of admiration. More than an atlas, it is a beautifully colored monument to Egyptomania at its most elegant.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49048619679979,"sku":"179-1837--8200-5170-2026","price":8200.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00179_IMG_9687copy.jpg?v=1784584842"},{"product_id":"faerno-fabulae-centum-ex-antiquis-1564","title":"Fabulae centum ex antiquis auctoribus delectae","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eEt a Gabriele Faerno Cremonensi Carminibus Explicatae \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eOne hundred fables selected from ancient authors, and explained in verse by Gabriele Faerno from Cremona \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003e1564 First Edition, second issue\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eLeaves [2] f.e., [4], 100, [2] r.e. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eRomae (Rome) Vincentius Luchinus\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003e18th-century half leather over marbled boards; spine with five raised bands, gilt decorations, and gilt-lettered title. Some rubbing to the extremities, especially the spine. Edges sprinkled blue. The front free endleaf bears a later manuscript note in French quoting Brunet. The title page carries an early manuscript shelfmark, \"137,\" and an inscription recording early ownership by a Carmelite friar of Bergamo, possibly corroborated by an old stamp on the verso, apparently that of a convent, though difficult to decipher. Early restoration to the verso of the title page at the upper inner margin. Minor worming from leaves A to B. Leaf 19 (Corvus et Vulpes) with loss to the upper outer corner, not affecting the text or illustration. Leaves 94 and 96 misnumbered in the printed pagination and corrected in manuscript. A clean, sound copy with fresh impressions of the illustrations. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eThis 1564 Roman issue is the second of the three nearly identical Luchinus settings of the editio princeps of Faerno's fables, printed in 1563, 1564, and 1565, the only bibliographical distinction between them being the date in the colophon. Gabriele Faerno, the Cremonese humanist, Latin poet, and scholar in papal service, regarded the collection as his principal literary achievement, though he died before it reached print. Published in the Rome of Pius IV, immediately after the closing of the Council of Trent, and under the educational influence of Carlo Borromeo, the work belongs to the moment when classical learning was consciously enlisted in the service of Catholic counter-reform. The dedication makes that program explicit, presenting Aesop's ancient fables not as elegant exercises in Latin verse but as instruments for the moral formation of children, uniting literary refinement with ethical instruction. A pagan fabulist enlisted for a child's education is less surprising than what we might think: Christian humanism had long put classical material to pedagogical use, and fables concerned with prudence and flattery, rather than pagan cult or myth, needed little correction. The choice is nonetheless telling. Opting for Aesop-via-Faerno over a strictly catechetical text suggests the Borromean circle saw moral formation as requiring worldly discernment as much as doctrine, precisely the case Antoniano's dedication makes in likening the child's character to soft wax best shaped early. Faerno's polished classical Latin and his close engagement with the ancient tradition soon made the collection the most influential Renaissance version of Aesop, widely adopted in schools throughout Europe. Taken as a whole, the volume represents a papal Roman recasting of the Aesopian corpus into humanist Latin verse, conceived from the outset as a union of text and image through its celebrated cycle of Renaissance woodcuts.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eT\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003ehe volume opens with an engraved architectural title in aedicule form, the arms of Pius IV rising between two unicorns beneath the word \"humilitas\", while allegorical female figures hold the arms of the dedicatee, Carlo Borromeo, below. After dedication and preliminaries, the fables start, revealing art and print history details which are rather more interesting than the book's modest reputation as a schoolroom Aesop might suggest. Each of the hundred fables is prefaced by a full-page etched illustration, and the designs are generally attributed to Pirro Ligorio, one of the more colorful figures of Cinquecento Rome. By 1564 Ligorio was Pius IV's own papal architect, fresh from building the Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican gardens and already at work on the gardens and hundred fountains of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli; his day job, in other words, was building for the very pope whose printing privilege appears in this book. He was also, by reputation, Rome's foremost antiquarian and its most contested one, being often labelled as forger. Whatever the truth of those charges, the same imaginative, reconstructive eye that got him into trouble as an antiquarian is arguably what makes these fable designs so lively: foxes, crows, and put-upon donkeys are staged within fully realized landscapes and architectural settings of a kind one would expect from a man who spent his career restaging antiquity itself. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-sheets-root=\"1\"\u003eThe etching is credited largely to Étienne DuPérac, a young Frenchman then still early in a Roman career that would soon make him one of the period's most important recorders of the city's ruins. DuPérac careful, legible line, paired with Ligorio's antiquarian imagination is put to work on a book meant for children, that fascinated art historians for the marriage of two defining sensibilities of later sixteenth-century Roman visual culture. The moral lessons are all very worthy, but we must confess our eyes keep wandering to the pictures. We love the contradiction: a schoolbook intended to shape children's education, yet animated by one hundred etchings conceived by the wonderfully unruly Pirro Ligorio, the architect of the Villa d'Este, whose genius for reconstructing antiquity occasionally strayed into outright invention. Foxes scheme, crows boast, donkeys suffer, and virtue has rarely looked so entertaining.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49048619811051,"sku":"153-1564--5200-3000-2026","price":5200.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00153_IMG_8655.jpg?v=1784007606"},{"product_id":"rondelet-libri-de-piscibus-marinis-1554","title":"Libri de piscibus marinis. (With:) Universae aquatilium Historiae pars altera","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn quibus verae Piscium effigies expressae sunt. (With:) Cum veris ipsorum Imaginibus.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e Books on Marine Fishes, illustrated with faithful representations of the species. (With:) The Second Part of the General History of Aquatic Animals, illustrated with faithful images of the animals described.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1554-1555 First Edition\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePp. [1] f.e., [16], 583, [23]; [12], 242, [9]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLyon (Lugduni) Apud Matthiam Bonhomme\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFull vellum binding, probably rebacked in the eighteenth century (watermark on the free endpapers: \"Pontechio\" and \"PDV\"); title gilt on a spine label; lightly spotted, but very solid. Edges blind-tooled with a decorative pattern. Endpapers renewed. Traces of glue at the inner margin of the title page. Wide margins throughout. Some marginalia and underlinings in an early hand. Light to moderate foxing, with occasional soiling and browning confined to a few leaves throughout the volume. Small dampstain at the upper outer margin of the first hundred leaves, limited and unobtrusive. Barely noticeable worming at the inner margin, appearing intermittently at either the upper or lower edge of a limited number of pages. A few pages misnumbered. Two early ink ownership inscriptions flank the printer's device on the title page, one deliberately obliterated by scoring, the other surviving but difficult to decipher. Decorated headpieces, woodcut initials, and text in Roman, italic, and Greek types. Text and hundreds of woodcuts clean and sharply impressed. Crisp paper throughout. Overall, an excellent copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFirst edition of one of the founding works of modern ichthyology, in which the study of aquatic life passed from the authority of ancient texts to the evidence of the dissected specimen. Guillaume Rondelet transformed the study of fishes into an observational science grounded in anatomy, comparison, and direct experience. His title itself announces the programme (\"verae Piscium effigies\", i.e. The true likenesses of fishes), making the illustration not an embellishment but a scientific witness. Published by Macé (or Matthieu) Bonhomme in Lyon, one of Europe's foremost centers of scientific printing, the work unites humanist philology, medicine, Aristotelian natural philosophy, and first-hand observation in a single systematic survey of aquatic life. Rather than compiling earlier authorities, Rondelet repeatedly tests them against nature, producing a work that described far more species than any predecessor and remained the standard reference on aquatic animals for more than a century. The present copy preserves both parts as originally issued, including the Pars Altera of 1555, a completeness frequently lacking. The two parts have dedicated title pages, each bearing Macé Bonhomme's Pegasus device with the Greek motto \"Ek ponou kleos\", meaning Glory out of Labour. Woodcut portrait of Rondelet at the end of the preliminaries of each part, designed by Pierre Vase. Illustrated throughout with 439 remarkable woodcuts, principally by Georges Reverdy, whose extraordinary fidelity to nature forms an essential part of the author's scientific method.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart I opens with an impressive series of commendatory verses by the young Charles de l'Escluse (Clusius), Jacques Daléchamps, and other humanists, revealing the network of Renaissance naturalists that gathered around Rondelet's enterprise. The Praefatio ad Lectorem presents the study of nature as the highest intellectual pursuit after Scripture before establishing an Aristotelian framework based on habitat, anatomy, behaviour, and other distinguishing characteristics. Each species is treated through its Greek and Latin names, vernacular names from Marseille, Provence, Liguria, Rome, Venice, Bordeaux, Narbonne, and elsewhere, classical testimonies, anatomical observations, and medicinal and dietary properties, supported by abundant citations to Aristotle, Pliny, Galen, Dioscorides, Athenaeus, Oppian, Aelian, Columella, Martial, Horace, Ausonius, Plutarch, and other ancient writers. Particularly celebrated is the chapter De Vulva et Mammis, in which Rondelet argues from anatomical observation that whales and dolphins possess true mammary glands, one of the earliest printed recognitions that cetaceans belong with mammals rather than fishes. Part II extends the survey to shellfish, crustaceans, zoophytes, freshwater and marsh fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and aquatic mammals.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe illustrations themselves reveal the triumph (and occasional limits) of Rondelet's method: fishes examined from life are rendered with astonishing accuracy, while creatures known chiefly from report, such as the generalized beaver, betray the persistence of inherited tradition. Among the most memorable images are the shark, turtle, seal, whales, sea stars, together with far less realistic sea monsters, and the celebrated frog scene with reeds, aquatic plants, and tadpoles, which is the most elaborate landscape woodcuts in the volume. We have a soft spot for Renaissance woodcuts, especially when they stand with one foot in careful observation and the other in legend. Rondelet's fishes, sharks, turtles, and whales are marvels of early scientific precision, while his sea monsters and wonderfully improbable beaver remind us that even the greatest minds occasionally had to trust a good story. It's exactly the kind of book we love: where curiosity, craftsmanship, and the birth of modern science still leave room for a little wonder.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"La Fenice Antiquaria","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49048644190443,"sku":"175-1554-1555--7600-5488-2026","price":7600.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0766\/2000\/5611\/files\/00175_IMG_9719.jpg?v=1784007958"}],"url":"https:\/\/fenicebooks.com\/en-eux\/collections\/illustrated-wonders.oembed","provider":"La Fenice Antiquaria","version":"1.0","type":"link"}