Mattioli - Commentaires (full color) - 1572

Mattioli Pietro Andrea

Comments by Mr. Pierre Andre’ Matthiole

In Lyon - 1572 -
By Guillaume Rouille

(138), 819, (1b),(22) p. ill.

In folio grande
37 X 24 cm.

Provenance:
Jonas Anthoyne Meuron, surgeon of Neuchatel, year 1668.

splendid and extremely rare specimen,
completely hand-colored, of the first important edition with translation by Jean Des Moulins.

One of the most famous treatises on botany, distillation, and perfumery, which contains about 1000 woodcuts of plants, animals, distillation apparatus, fish, crustaceans, and insects.
BAUDRIER IX 340
CAILLET 7241
NISSEN BBI 1313
USTC 20876

The absolute unavailability of a copy of this text, COMPLETELY and integrally preserved, is enhanced by the entirety of the coloring of each large and small illustration.

Contains privilege, errata, and register.

NOT KNOWN IN THE WORLD, copies entirely hand-colored as this one.
Rare specimens partially colored, sold years ago at international auctions for very high prices.
All of the about 1000 woodcuts, probably not contemporaneous, appear in excellent coloring, with watercolor and pastel, skillfully executed.

The work stands out for its rich iconography, illustrating the botany, medicine, and pharmacopoeia of the era.

The ‘Commentarii’ expand Dioscorides’ ‘De materia medica’ with a text that deepens knowledge of simples, and of the many increasingly numerous plants that Mattioli describes.
The textual apparatus is accompanied by woodcuts prepared with the collaboration of Giorgio Liberale da Udine and by the engraver Wolfgang Meyerpeck.

Excellent and very robust contemporary binding, with professional marginal-inlay parchment reinforcement, preserving the integrity of the plates and the original spine.
Absolute solidity of the hinges.
The floral designs stamped in oil on the plates (center and in multiple frames) and on the five-nave spine with a contemporaneous paper label (abrasa) bearing the title remain clearly visible.
Slight abrasions, cuts, and scoring on the original plates.

Internals fairly well preserved, with splendid colored woodcuts adorning the text.
Numerous substantial contemporaneous marginal notes in the text (probably referring to the surgeon owner of the work).
Some traces of humidity, recurring but not bothersome, mainly due to the water used for laying on the watercolor.
In some small illustrations (about a dozen), corresponding to the central part of the text (third and fourth book), where the pages are thinner, as already noted, due to humidity caused by the water for coloring and the woodcuts appear on recto and verso, there are small holes or tears (a few millimeters) or slight backing.
However each of the 1000 illustrations remains regularly viewable.
Ancient restoration with a backing to the title page (with a small manuscript in the lower corner of the ‘Privilege of Roy’ at the missing margin on the verso of the title page - see photo).
Other small ancient restorations marked +2 (small missing tab backed and manuscript on recto and verso, see photo), at X (p. 241/42 with small backing in the lower corner that encroaches on the text, depriving it of a few letters),
at X6 (p. 251 with a small handwritten strip on the recto, while the verso is intact).
Other tears repaired at Nn4 (427/28) and KK3 (665/66).
Double modern flyleaves, with decorated front and back flyleaves as well as guards.

A good and fascinating copy of this unobtainable text, entirely hand-colored.

COVERED. COMPLETE