PANTHEUS, Joannes Augustinus. Voarchadumia contra alchimiam: ars distincta ab archimia & sophia. Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 1530. 4° (200 x 150mm). Title printed in four colours within a woodcut border, double-page view of Venice, 11 full-page illustrations. (Lacking the front blank and preliminary leaves O and OO, these possibly never bound, faint dampstain, some light marginal spotting.) Modern vellum. Provenance: deleted title inscription and deleted stamp on the last leaf.
PANTHEUS, Joannes Augustinus. Voarchadumia contra alchimiam: ars distincta ab archimia & sophia. Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 1530. 4° (200 x 150mm). Title printed in four colours within a woodcut border, double-page view of Venice, 11 full-page illustrations. (Lacking the front blank and preliminary leaves O and OO, these possibly never bound, faint dampstain, some light marginal spotting.) Modern vellum. Provenance: deleted title inscription and deleted stamp on the last leaf.

Details
PANTHEUS, Joannes Augustinus. Voarchadumia contra alchimiam: ars distincta ab archimia & sophia. Venice: Giovanni Tacuino, 1530. 4° (200 x 150mm). Title printed in four colours within a woodcut border, double-page view of Venice, 11 full-page illustrations. (Lacking the front blank and preliminary leaves O and OO, these possibly never bound, faint dampstain, some light marginal spotting.) Modern vellum. Provenance: deleted title inscription and deleted stamp on the last leaf.

FIRST EDITION of this rare esoteric text, and early example of four-colour printing, touching on alchemy, angelic/Enochian alphabets, and metallurgy. John Dee's own heavily annotated copy is now in the British Library, the marginalia revealing the influence of cabbalistic speculation in his methodology. The present copy, like John Dee's, is bound without the blank and two preliminary leaves noted in Fergusson but evidently not found in many copies. RARE: ABPC records no copy selling at auction since 1987, that one also bound without the preliminary leaves. Brunet IV-349; Fergusson II, p.166.

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