[Armes de Lyon] Virgile - Virgilii Maronis Bucolicorum Georgicorum Aeneidos - 1620

VIRGIL. — PUB. VIRGILII MARONIS BUCOLICORUM, GEORGICORUM, AENEIDOS... WITH MAURI SERVII HONORATI COMMENTARII (GENEVA / ALLOBROGIAN COLONY, PIERRE & JACQUES CHOUËT, 1620).
Coloniæ Allobrogum [Genève] : Pierre & Jacques Chouët, 1620.
In-8°/In-4°. Full nineteenth-century calf very ornate, armorial boards with Lyon city arms.

Prestigious humanist edition from the early 17th century published in Geneva under the false classical address "Coloniæ Allobrogum" by the printers-booksellers Pierre and Jacques Chouët.

This scientific and critical text constitutes the absolute reference for the study of Virgil under the Ancien Régime: in 1600, the scholar Pierre Daniel rediscov - ered at the Fleury library an exceptional manuscript of the great Latin commentator Servius, completing the text transmitted since the Middle Ages.

The work also offers an apparatus criticus of first importance with the allegorical interpretation analysis by Fabius Planciades Fulgentius (De Continentia Virgiliana) and the scholia of Junius Philargyrius on Virgil’s pastoral and agricultural poems.

Exceptional copy preserved in a decorative armorial binding of the period (early 17th century) in full calf. Fronts adorned with a spectacular gilded-iron decoration of the city of Lyon, featuring a wide foliate border and a central shield with a rampant lion. The calf shows surface cracking and crazing of the leather on the boards and spine, with small losses of leather at the head and tail and on the border of the corners. The structure remains notably solid and visually striking.

Very healthy interior on period laid paper with very light foxing or small marginal wear creases (notably along the border of the title page). Title well preserved bearing the printer’s lyre mark of Chouët.

Without the fortuitous discovery by the scholar Pierre Daniel of a lost manuscript in the Abbey of Fleury near Orléans, essential parts of the secrets of Virgil’s writing and of Roman mythology would have remained unknown.