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WITH A FULL-PAGE WOODCUT OF THE TOWER OF BABEL
[BERGOMENSIS] FORESTI, Jacobus Philippus. Novissime historia omniu[m] noviter [editae]…que Supplementum Chronicaru[m] nuncupantur. Venice, Albertinus de Lissona Vercellensis, 1503.
Folio [32 x 22 cm], (462) ff., without final blank, including woodcut Pallavicini arms in red and black on title, numerous floriated initials, red capital strokes throughout, printed marginalia and timeline in gutter, 4 full-page woodcuts in ornamental borders, and 89 city views in text. Thoroughly annotated in margin in a contemporary hand (generally subject headings). Bound in contemporary blindstamped pigskin, later title label in ink; remnants of clasps; corners of binding chipped and top of spine gone, exposing chords. Some soiling and worming to scattered leaves, but generally a fresh broad-margined copy.
$22,000 First 16th C edition and overall fine copy of this illustrated world history by the Augustinian monk Foresti, notable for being the first edition to contain an account of Columbus’ New World discovery, and the second to contain Albertino’s full-page woodcut of the construction of the Tower of Babel. It is also of interest that this is the first account of the discovery of America to appear in a general work (rather than a news report), testifying to the rapid absorption of the Discovery in Italian literary culture. The work’s remaining full-page woodcuts, newly cut for the present edition, illustrate the Creation, Expulsion, and Murder of Abel by Cain. The work is also of interest for containing 89 woodcuts of Italian and European city-views, including large views of Milan, Genoa, Rome, Venice and Verona. A majority of these are topographically specific—and not simply generic or imaginary views. A classic of High Renaissance Venetian book illustration, the work is included in the most prestigious collections devoted to the graphic arts (Mortimer, this edition), and from the standpoint of the History of the Book, the work’s first illustrated edition (1486) shows the increasing importance of illustration in genres which traditionally lacked pictures. The culmination of this trend is certainly Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle, of which the present work is considered a forerunner
Foresti’s compendious, 16-book chronicle traces the history of the world from the Creation to the present day, concluding with a short chapter on the events of 1503. In addition to its 4 full-page plates of Biblical scenes, its 5 large woodcuts of Italian cities have been updated and improved from earlier editions: the city-view of Milan is newly enlarged from a block first used in 1490, and the views of Rome, Venice, and Florence are copied directly from the 1490 edition. The full-page Tower of Babel woodcut, which first appeared in 1490, depicts a hexagonal brick tower in the midst of construction, surrounded by scaffolding and clusters of diligent laborers. Of architectural interest for the large number of bird’s eye views, and especially for the imaginative reconstruction of a historically significant (albeit legendary) building, the Tower of Babel. Along with the Temple, the Tower can be considered the most architecturally significant structure in the Bible, although attempts by later antiquarians to reconstruct it are far less numerous. The best known is the that of Athanassius Kircher (1679). Like the other subjects allotted the focus of full-page illustration, it represents a turning point in the state of humanity: from a state of linguistic unity and harmony to that of dispersal and confusion. Like the Greek myth of Daedalus, it serves as an exhortation against overweening human/architectural ambition.
As mentioned above, the present edition is also the first to give an account of Columbus’ 1492-1493 voyage to the West Indies (“De quattour proaximis insulis in India,” GG1v-GG2v), as the author augmented every edition with accounts of recent events.
* Adams F-748; Mortimer Italian 195. The present edition is the fifth; it was preceded by editions of 1483, 1485, 1486 and 1490, of which the first two were unillustrated.
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