‘There is no one in any corner of Europe, no man living today, to whom the name of Mattioli is not in some way known’.
- Girolamo Donzellini (1513-1587) (quoted in Findlen, 1999, pp. 374)
Petri Andreae Matthioli Medici Senensis Commentarii, in Libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, de Materia Medica, Adjectis quàm plurimis plantarum & animalium imaginibus, eodem authore, also known as Commentarii.
The first illustrated edition, and second overall, of Pietro Andrea Mattioli's magnum opus - one of the most prominent herbals of all time and one of the most important works in the history of botany, widely considered to be the first work in medical botany. This example is particularly significant for having all 564 woodcut engravings coloured by a contemporary hand, and being bound in its original full vellum binding, housed in a bespoke clamshell slipcase.
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Mattioli described a hundred new plants, taking into account the medical and non-medical botany of his own time. Most of the plants and animals were drawn from life by Liberale of Udine, though some pictures had been brought from Damascus, Cairo, and Alexandria by Odoardo Polacco. This book marked the transition from the study of plants as a field of medicine to a study of interest in its own right. A noteworthy inclusion in this book is an early variety of the tomato, the first documented example of the vegetable being grown and eaten in Europe.
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The book as published features 564 woodcuts by Giorgio Liberale. In this example, all of the woodcuts are hand-coloured. 506 of the woodcuts illustrate plants and flowers with the remainder being fish, crustaceans, amphibians, insects, reptiles, birds, and quadrupeds. To find a hand coloured example of this book is incredibly rare, and we could trace only two examples of later editions of this work having sold with their illustrations similarly hand coloured. One for £54,000 at Bonhams 6th October 2009 lot 55, and £49,900 at Christie's 17th March 1999 lot 56. We could not trace any hand coloured examples of this edition having ever sold, and this is a particularly beautiful example.
There is lots of marginalia throughout including captions in English to almost all of the plants/flowers providing the name of each, often colloquial names such as 'opium', 'nightshade', 'hemlock', etc - some even more curious titles such as the devil's home, 'dragons', etc. The English marginalia is circa 1720 with the less frequent Latin in a much earlier hand.
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Condition:
Binding prominently aged causing a rippled texture to the vellum, discoloured. One ribbon tie present at the bottom of the rear board with the others lacking. Some light restoration work has occurred to secure the binding to the page block with a piece of thin leather criss-crossing across the joints as would have been originally there. Faded ink to top of spine 'Matthjol', very early and almost certainly written with the production of the binding. Final leaf of epistola to the front pastedown, lacking all prior to that leaf (collation to follow). Verso page has a purple stain which leaks through the next 28 leaves but increasingly lightly such that after the end of the index it doesn't show particularly obtrusively in the actual text block (from the start of numbered pages), though even before that the only thing leaking through is some of the purple-red colour. The stain looks to have been caused by wax (probably a seal from the colour).
Hole through pp.180-181. pp.207-208 leaf torn with no loss to text. pp.265-266 leaf torn with a small amount of loss to text. pp.445-446 torn and partially loose but present. Several other leaves with small edge tears with the significant majority not affecting the text.
Lots of marginalia throughout, often significantly interesting. A few hands are present, one in English from c.1720 (dated due to a mention of this year and an implication of it being recent), another in Latin much earlier, and another in Italian probably between the Latin and English. This marginalia shows lots of evidence of this book having been used as a guide to botany and of advice in growing certain plants, identifying poisons, etc.
Lacks all before the final leaf of epistola (5 leaves total, including general title page), lacks pp.185-186, and pp.705-707 (though three fragmented leaves are supplied at the end of the book which could be any of those lacking, though they appear to probably be from epistola, one attached to rear pastedown). Several fragmented blanks are also present to the rear of the volume. Of the 24 unnumbered leaves and 707 numbered pages called for, this example has 19 and 702 respectively (740/755 pages total).
