细节
[RUSCELLI, Girolamo (1500-1566).] ALEXIS OF PIEDMONT (pseud.?). Secreti del reverendo donno Alessio Piemontese. Venice: Sigismondo Bordogna, 1555.
4o (190 x 143mm). Roman and italic types, woodcut device (winged lion of St. Mark astride globe, holding open book), historiated woodcut capitals. (First three leaves remargined, title a bit soiled, minor spotting and marginal stains to a few leaves.) Modern paper boards. Provenance: Haskell F. Norman (bookplate, his sale part I, Christie's New York, 18 March 1998, lot 185).
RARE FIRST EDITION. The authorship of this phenomenally popular book of secrets is uncertain. "Alexis of Piedmont" is otherwise unknown, and many believe, based on evidence contained in Girolamo Ruscelli's Secreti nuovi di marvigliosa virtu i quali continouando e quelli di Donno Alessio (1567), that Ruscelli issued the earlier work under a pseudonym. According to the preface to the second edition (1557), the Secreti was first written in Latin, but no trace of this supposed original version has ever been discovered.
The "Secrets of Alexis" published a wide range of empirically discovered recipes, including formulae for medicinal compounds, cosmetics, pigments, dyes, metallurgy and jewelry. Its popularity was such that within ten years the work had been translated into French, English, Latin and German; three additional parts to the original Italian edition were issued (1558, 1559 and 1569), and fifty-six editions of the work had appeared by the close of the century. Thorndike states (vi, p. 215) that "publication of the literature of secrets, medicinal and otherwise, received a great impulse from the appearance... of the Secrets of Alessio of Piedmont." Ferguson Bibliotheca Chemica I, pp.22-23 (1568 edition); Ferguson Books of Secrets III, 33-37; NLM/Durling 106; Norman 1860; Partington II, 28-29; Thorndike VI, 215-216.
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RARE FIRST EDITION. The authorship of this phenomenally popular book of secrets is uncertain. "Alexis of Piedmont" is otherwise unknown, and many believe, based on evidence contained in Girolamo Ruscelli's Secreti nuovi di marvigliosa virtu i quali continouando e quelli di Donno Alessio (1567), that Ruscelli issued the earlier work under a pseudonym. According to the preface to the second edition (1557), the Secreti was first written in Latin, but no trace of this supposed original version has ever been discovered.
The "Secrets of Alexis" published a wide range of empirically discovered recipes, including formulae for medicinal compounds, cosmetics, pigments, dyes, metallurgy and jewelry. Its popularity was such that within ten years the work had been translated into French, English, Latin and German; three additional parts to the original Italian edition were issued (1558, 1559 and 1569), and fifty-six editions of the work had appeared by the close of the century. Thorndike states (vi, p. 215) that "publication of the literature of secrets, medicinal and otherwise, received a great impulse from the appearance... of the Secrets of Alessio of Piedmont." Ferguson Bibliotheca Chemica I, pp.22-23 (1568 edition); Ferguson Books of Secrets III, 33-37; NLM/Durling 106; Norman 1860; Partington II, 28-29; Thorndike VI, 215-216.