De Deis gentium varia et multiplex historia, in qua simul de eorum imaginibus et cognominibus agitur, ubi plurima etiam hactenus multis ignota explicantur, et pleraque clarius tractantur.

GIRALDI, Lilio Gregorio.

Published by Basel, Oporinus, 1548., 1548

About this Item

Folio, pp.[vi], 764, [68]; bound without blank a4, and without z4, with the short missing text supplied in manuscript in a near-contemporary hand at foot of z3v; text in Latin and Greek, woodcut initials; title-page laid down, some corners restored, damp- and mould-stains in the first and last leaves, several leaves browned; early nineteenth-century quarter calf with marbled sides, spine decorated and lettered in gilt; jshort splits to joints, spine chipped at head and foot; place of printing (Basel) and printer's name (Oporinus) censored in ink on title and colophon, many late sixteenth-century marginal annotations to first five syntagma and sporadically through the rest of the work (for a total of approx.220 pp.); late seventeenth-century ownership inscription at head of title, obscured in ink, eighteenth-century ownership inscription of Zacharias De Amicis (see below) to title.First edition of the most important mythography to be published after Boccaccio's Genealogiae deorum gentilium and before Conti's Mythologiae, with extensive marginalia in the first part. Giraldi was a prolific author, disciple of Sannazaro, Pontano, and Chalchondylas, who was his teacher of Greek. After a brilliant career in Rome, Giraldi suffered the consequences of the Sack of 1527, and spent the rest of his life blighted by illness, poverty, and neglect; Montaigne alluded to his sorrowful last years with regret in one of his Essais (i.35). The marginalia reveal an intensive study of antiquity by a late sixteenth-century reader, and include use of verse for mnemonic purposes; another early reader added, in the lower margin of p.256, an integration of the short portion of text missing as a result of unbound leaves, all blank except for the end of the text which the annotator supplies thus revealing access to other copies of this work or to a network able to provide him with the missing lines. This copy later belonged to the jurist Zacharias (or Zaccaria) De Amicis, from Aquila. Born in 1722, after studying law and humanistic studies he entered the service of Charles III, first as Governor and later as Auditor. He was the author of a Repertorio legale and many other works never published. Adams G-718; VD16 G2103; see J.Seznec, The survival of the pagan gods: the mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and art (1953), pp.229- 31. Language: Latin. Seller Inventory # G3028

Bibliographic Details

Title: De Deis gentium varia et multiplex historia,...

Publisher: Basel, Oporinus, 1548.

Publication Date: 1548

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

Edition: 1st Edition