Details
September 1497
IAMBLICHUS (ca. 250 - ca. 325). De mysteriis Aegyptiorum. Chaldaeorum. Assyriorum, and more than a dozen other Platonic and neo-Platonic writings. Ed. and tr. Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Super-chancery 2° (309 x 202mm). 185 leaves (without final blank, otherwise collation, contents and variant states as given in Christie's cat. 27-xi-91 lot 17). Roman type 2:114, greek 2:114 (quotations). 37 lines and headline. Woodcut initial A, initial-spaces mostly with guide-letters.
BINDING: 19th-century English calf gilt (rubbed in places), coat-of-arms on sides, crowned monogram in top compartment of spine. PROVENANCE: A few manuscript marginalia (washed out); Richard Heber (1773-1833), collector's stamp; 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry (1806-84), arms and monogram
FIRST EDITION of this important collection of classical and Byzantine Platonic works, which through Ficino's excerpts and Latin versions became widely known to the humanists. Except for Alcinous on Plato (first printed in Petrus Balbus's translation at Nuremberg in 1472) and the Pythagorean Golden Verses (previously published in the original Greek, see lots 1 and 5), all these texts first appeared in print in Aldus's edition (the editio princeps of Iamblichus was not published until 1678, at Oxford). Authors include among others Proclus, Porphyrius, Synesius, Michael Psellus, Priscianus Lydus, Seusippus, Xenocrates, and Ficino himself (De voluptate of 1457); see Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum 1937 pt. III for the textual history of each tractate. Ficino did not learn Greek before the age of twenty-three. Cosimo de' Medici gave him a villa and commissioned translations of the Hermetic corpus and Plato. The present translations date from the early 1460s and late 80s, and Ficino dedicated the Aldine edition of them to Lorenzo the Magnificent's second son, Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici (later Pope Leo X). HC *9358; BMC V, 557; Goff J-216; IGI 5096; Flodr 195:1 (Iamblichus); Klebs 529.1; BPH 127-28; Murphy 17; Sansoviniana 19; Laurenziana 17; Scapecchi 12; R 13:6
IAMBLICHUS (ca. 250 - ca. 325). De mysteriis Aegyptiorum. Chaldaeorum. Assyriorum, and more than a dozen other Platonic and neo-Platonic writings. Ed. and tr. Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Super-chancery 2° (309 x 202mm). 185 leaves (without final blank, otherwise collation, contents and variant states as given in Christie's cat. 27-xi-91 lot 17). Roman type 2:114, greek 2:114 (quotations). 37 lines and headline. Woodcut initial A, initial-spaces mostly with guide-letters.
BINDING: 19th-century English calf gilt (rubbed in places), coat-of-arms on sides, crowned monogram in top compartment of spine. PROVENANCE: A few manuscript marginalia (washed out); Richard Heber (1773-1833), collector's stamp; 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry (1806-84), arms and monogram
FIRST EDITION of this important collection of classical and Byzantine Platonic works, which through Ficino's excerpts and Latin versions became widely known to the humanists. Except for Alcinous on Plato (first printed in Petrus Balbus's translation at Nuremberg in 1472) and the Pythagorean Golden Verses (previously published in the original Greek, see lots 1 and 5), all these texts first appeared in print in Aldus's edition (the editio princeps of Iamblichus was not published until 1678, at Oxford). Authors include among others Proclus, Porphyrius, Synesius, Michael Psellus, Priscianus Lydus, Seusippus, Xenocrates, and Ficino himself (De voluptate of 1457); see Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum 1937 pt. III for the textual history of each tractate. Ficino did not learn Greek before the age of twenty-three. Cosimo de' Medici gave him a villa and commissioned translations of the Hermetic corpus and Plato. The present translations date from the early 1460s and late 80s, and Ficino dedicated the Aldine edition of them to Lorenzo the Magnificent's second son, Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici (later Pope Leo X). HC *9358; BMC V, 557; Goff J-216; IGI 5096; Flodr 195:1 (Iamblichus); Klebs 529.1; BPH 127-28; Murphy 17; Sansoviniana 19; Laurenziana 17; Scapecchi 12; R 13:6