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