Cultured Oyster Books

The first numismatics book with
illustrations of coins
67. [Numismatics] Fulvio, Andrea.
ILLUSTRIUM IMAGINES. Rome:
Jacopo Mazzocchi, 1517. Considered the
second book to be devoted to
numismatics and the first to show
illustrations of coins. Small 8vo. An
attractive copy in 18 th -century Italian
vellum with original hand lettering on the
spine. The well-known title page within
its woodcut border is here trimmed and
mounted. The present copy has 119 (of
120) leaves, lacking 2D4 with its two
portraits, that is provided in facsimile laid
in. The portrait space on the recto of D2
(folio XVIII) is blank, as in all copies.
This copy has an additional leaf following
the title page, apparently added at the
time of the present binding, with a
manuscript copy of the colophon
information that appears on the last page
of the text: mperatorum, et illustrium
Virorum ac Mulierum vultus ex antiquis
nomismatibus expressi : emenda tum
correptumq. Opus per Andream Fulvium, diligentissimum Antiquarium. Impressum
Romae apud Jacobum Mazochium, Rom. Achad. Bibl. Anno MDXVII. Approximately a
third of the coin images and circular inscriptions are based on actual examples seen by
Fulvio, the rest are purely imaginary. The striking images and their elaborate frames
were long thought to be by the Venetian artist Ugo de Carpi but recent scholarship
indicates they might be by Giovanni Battista Palumba, a member of the artistic circle of
Pope Leo X. The colophon date is given here as XV November, as in almost all copies,
although at least one is known to have an earlier date, VII November. In Christian
Dekesel’s (1997) census of copies in known collections, besides the single copy with the
VII date, there are 6 with the XV date and another 18 which have not been examined.
Presumably the present copy was not included in the 25 known to Dekesel. In addition,
there is a record of one copy known to be printed on vellum, from the Henry E.
Huntington collection (the Hoe copy,) that was auctioned at the Anderson Gallery in New
York in 1917 for $375.00. John Cunnally, in his 1999 book, Images of the Illustrious:
The Numismatic Presence in the Renaissance, writes: “Beginning in 1517, with the
publication of Andrea Fulvio's Illustrium Imagines, the coins themselves were joined by
another kind of object that could be collected, circulated, exchanged, and given away,
and which seemed to gush forth from its own perennial vein - the numismatic book.”
[Numismatics in the Age of Grolier p. 18; Harvard/Mortimer-Italian 203; Dekesel p.378]
$5,750.00
68. [Numismatics] Occo, Adolph. IMPP. ROMANORUM NUMISMATA A
POMPEIO MAGNO AD HERACLIUM. Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1579. A very
good copy in contemporary limp vellum, hand lettered on the spine, and with what