For
your consideration:
For
your consideration:
How
the
ANCIENTS
Treated their Dead — 23
Good-Sized Engravings
(Ancient
Funeral Customs). Porcacchi,
Tommaso. Fvnerali antichi di diuersi popoli, et nationi; forma, ordine,
et pompa di sepolture, di essequie, di consecrationi antiche et d’altro,
descritti in dialogo.... Con le figure in rame.... Venetiae: [Appresso Simon Galignani
de Karera], 1574. 4to (27.6 cm, 10.875"). a4 A–O4;
[4] ff., 109, [1] pp., [1] f.; illus. 
• This
famous illustrated work of the Renaissance is an overview of the burial customs,
tombs, and monuments to the dead of various peoples in antiquity,
including
the Romans (with separate chapters on the Vestal Virgins and the Emperors),
the Hebrews, the Egyptians, “cave-dwellers,” and Christians, among
others. Funerali antichi is not just a historical, sociological, and
anthropological study, but an important medical work published at a time
when
many European cities were rapidly exhausting traditional burial sites.
The text describes the engraver, Girolamo Porro of Padua, as being without peer in his profession, an extraordinary achievement given his poor eyesight. Each of the 23 chapters begins with an engraving by him illustrating some funeral custom, e.g., washing the body, burying or burning it, and entombing, while the text “is in the form of a dialogue discussion of the plates and begins by discussing the artist” (Mortimer).
Tommaso
Porcacchi (1530–85) was a Tuscan historian, philologist, and poet
who also published (among other works) L’isole piu famose del
mondo
(The Most Famous Islands in the World) and Delle cagioni delle
guerre antiche (Concerning the Causes of Ancient Wars).
This
first edition of this sought-after work is printed in italic and some roman,
with woodcut foliated and historiated initials, and with woodcut tailpieces;
a second edition appeared in 1591. The engraved title-page has the title
inside
an elaborate architectural frame in the neo-classical style with cherubs
above and a figure in Roman armor on each side. 
The
23 large (just under half-page) engravings by Girolamo Porro are very fine
and well impressed. Above the colophon is the handsome
woodcut printer’s device of Simon Galignani incorporating the emblem
of a tower with the motto, “TURRIS ET FORTITUDO MIHI DEUS.”
• Adams P1903; Mortimer, Italian Sixteenth Century
Books, 395; Durling 3718. Deep-walnut full calf old-style: Round spine
with raised bands, accented in gilt and with blind-tooled devices in
compartments;
red leather title label, gilt-lettered and -ruled; fillets extending onto
covers from each band to terminate in trefoils and covers framed in blind
double fillets. Some light to moderate dust-soiling and very occasional staining,
seldom reaching and never obscuring printed area; one leaf has suffered
some
sort of spill, marks nowise damning. A1 without corner due to defect in paper
and extra printing running at right angles to text in bottom margin of
A1r
(p.1), likely due to a fold in the sheet during printing; none of this affects
text. A couple instances of marginalia, including the following written,
in
ink, in the top margin of the title-page: 
“Curioso,
y util Tratado.”
Single-click
any image above, when the hand appears on
For
more 16TH-CENTURY BOOKS, click here. For
more BOOKS IN ITALIAN, click here. For
more ILLUSTRATED BOOKS, click here.For
more GREEK & LATIN CLASSICS Or for
MEDICINE, click here. And
this is a classic GENERAL
