Icones, id est, Verae imagines virorum doctrina simul et pietate illustrium … quibus adiectae sunt nonnullae picturae quas emblemata vocant

Geneva: Jean de Laon, 1580. First edition. With 38 fine woodcut portraits and 44 numbered Emblems; title page vignette, ornamental scrollwork borders, numerous headpieces. Collation: *4 A-2Q4 (-2Q4 blank). Leaf E4 supplied from another copy (trimmed). 1 vols. 4to (9-5/8 x 6-1/8 inches). Full brown antique calf blocked in blind and in black, board edges and turn-ins gilt, marbled endleaves, edges red, by Alfred Matthews. Fine copy in dark green pull-off case (worn). First edition. With 38 fine woodcut portraits and 44 numbered Emblems; title page vignette, ornamental scrollwork borders, numerous headpieces. Collation: *4 A-2Q4 (-2Q4 blank). Leaf E4 supplied from another copy (trimmed). 1 vols. 4to (9-5/8 x 6-1/8 inches). A famous and interesting illustrated book from the Reformation, with portraits and short biographies of Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Savonarola, Zwingli, Melanchthon, Cranmer, John Knox, John Huss, and many others, including the young James VI of Scotland (to whom the book is dedicated). The series of Emblems is equally notable. In his Bibliographical Decameron, Dibdin writes extensively on the “delicacy of execution” of the emblems and the apparent fidelity of the portraits (reproducing an emblem and the portrait of James VI).

A tall copy, superbly bound by Alfred Matthews. Leaf E4 is supplied from another copy, with a six-line note in Latin in a contemporary hand; it is an inch shorter (Dibdin notes that copies are usually seen cut down to octavo size).

RARE AND BEAUTIFUL. Grässe I:359; Brunet I:843; Dibdin, Bibliographical Decameron I, pp. 274, 279-80; Adams B920; Henkel & Schöne. Emblemata, p. xlvii-xlviii. Provenance: signature and seal of Samuel W., Bratislava, anno 1737, at foot of title; sold at Sotheby Wilkingson & Hodge, 13 December 1909 (lot 105); General Theological Seminary (bookplate)