
Title: Illustrium Imagines, 1517. First Edition of the Earliest Collection of Ancient Coin Reproductions to be Printed
Author: Andrea Fulvio; Ugo da Carpi (Attributed)
Publisher: Rome, Jacopo Mazzocchi
Condition: Very Good
A first edition of Fulvio’s Illustrium Imagines, one of the most important emblem books of the Italian Renaissance, as well as the earliest collection of ancient coin reproductions to be printed in book form. The work contributed significantly to the dissemination of images of important figures of antiquity, including the Caesars, becoming a must-have in every humanist library and served as a template for generations of architects and artists to design tondi, friezes, metopes, etc. Each page is bordered with a large, partly repeated woodcut border, which leaves a space at the top for the round portrait printed from a separate woodblock. Below this, in a rectangular frame, is the short biography of the sitter, set in fine italics. The medallion portraits are loosely attributed to Italian woodcutter Ugo da Carpi (though this is up for debate) mainly reproduce the coin and medal portraits from the collection of the Bergamo-born bookseller, printer, publisher and antiquarian Giacomo Mazzocchi.
The portraits themselves show famous men and women, mostly emperors and their wives, of the Roman, Byzantine and German medieval history, and served in the sixteenth century as a basic reference for the study of Greek and Roman iconography. There are eight different border designs, and the portraits and borders were later copied for the Antoine Blanchard's Lyon edition of 1524 for Jean Monsnier and François Juste and for Johann Huttich's Imperatorum romanorum libellus.
There are 215 woodcut borders and 198 (of 204) woodcut portrait medallions.
The title page, the third leaf, and leaves XLIII, LVIII, and LXXVIII are lacking, with six of the portrait medallions lacking.
One finely bound volume in octavo, CCXV of CCXX leaves
This volume is in very good shape, with minor rubbing and scraping to the binding. The dedication page to Pope Leo the X and the final leaf bear small restorations. There is very little foxing or staining throughout.