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The Rare Book Tee Collection
Victoria Ex Labore Oversized Tee
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What is this about
In 1574, Bologna's Società Tipografica reissued Achille Bocchi's Symbolicarum Quaestionum de Universo Genere, a title that argues its own case: quas serio ludebat, "which he played seriously." Erasmus had his Adagia, Alciati his Emblemata of 1531; Bocchi, a Bolognese humanist and founder of his own academy, spent 151 emblems doing something similar: treating image and symbol as vehicles for theology, philosophy, and moral instruction, never mere decoration.
This one belongs to his emblems on governance and conduct: an ox skull, crowned in laurel, under a motto that needs no footnote: Victoria ex labore honesta, et vtilis. Victory earned through labor is honorable, and worth having. The plate carries its own small history too, engraved by Giulio Bonasone after Prospero Fontana's designs, then retouched for this 1574 printing by a seventeen-year-old named Agostino Carracci, a few years before he became one of the defining painters of the Baroque.
Wide neck, set-in sleeves, styled with dropped shoulders for the oversized look
Printed on an oversized, GOTS-certified organic cotton tee, 100% organic cotton, imported.
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