Flavio Giuseppe - Le ANTICHITÀ' GIUDAICHE - 1549

GIOSEFO [Flavio Giuseppe].

From Jewish Antiquities. Translated into Italian by M. Pietro Lauro Modenese. In Venice, near Baldassar Constantini at the sign of Saint George, 1549.

In-8° (approximately 150 × 110 mm). Pp. (6),303 di(24?), 306, (2) pages.

Example of the first volume (Books I–X) of the famous Italian translation of Flavius Josephus’s Antiquitates Judaicae, carried out by Pietro Lauro from Modena (c. 1510–1568), one of the most active and prolific Venetian vulgarizers of the sixteenth century.

The work, originally dedicated to the Duchess of Urbino, Leonora Gonzaga della Rovere, narrates the history of the Jewish people from Creation to the time of Esther. It constitutes one of the most important ancient historical sources on Palestine of the I century and contains, among other things, precious references to John the Baptist, to Jesus, and to the early Christians (including the famous Testimonium Flavianum).

Lauro’s translation, conducted from the Latin text and not directly from the Greek, appeared for the first time in 1544 at Vincenzo Valgrisi; the present is one of the first and rare reprints (EDIT16 CNCE 25092). It is accompanied by animated wood-engraved initials and the printer’s mark of Constantini (caduceus with serpents, dove and hands emerging from clouds).

Importance and rarity
It is one of the first and most widespread Italian vernacular translations of Giuseppe Flavio, a fundamental text for Jewish and Roman historiography and for Renaissance biblical exegesis. Lauro’s translation enjoyed extraordinary fortune and was reprinted several times in Venice up to the early seventeenth century, contributing decisively to the diffusion of knowledge of Josephus among a non-Latinist public. The 1549 Constantini edition is rather rare on the market, especially in copies that are only partially complete.

Condition
The original title page is missing (here reproduced by photostat) and some preliminary leaves (*-***1 and 8, p8) as well as some blank leaves. Present are foxing and humidity stains, especially on the initial leaves; some leaves with ancient restorations along the margins, with no loss of text. Modern rear binding with cords.

An incomplete but of notable historical-bibliographic interest copy, representative of the Venetian typographic production of the mid-sixteenth century and of the sixteenth-century fortune of one of the classic texts most read and consulted in the modern era.