MATTIOLI, PIETRO ANDREA. Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei...de Medica materia. Venice: Ex Officina Valgrisiana, 1565.
Folio, 354 x 244 mm., late sixteenth-century German silver-stamped calf over bevelled wooden boards, covers panelled in silver-gilt with roll tooled borders, large central floral ornaments signed "B G" on each cover, spine similarly tooled in silver-gilt, edges gilt and gauffered; brass clasps and catches, head of spine pulled with a small repair, a little wear at corners, covers skinned in a few places; some leaves lightly evenly browned, but generally a fine and crisp copy.
FIRST ENLARGED EDITION, AND THE FIRST WITH THE FULL SERIES OF THE MAGNIFICENT LARGE WOODCUTS, woodcut printer's device on title and at end, full-page woodcut portrait within elaborate border on M6v, and over 900 large woodcuts of plants, herbs, animals, insects, and distillation prcesses, most of them by Giorgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck, the majority filling three-quarters of the page. The botanical cuts first appeared in the 1562 Herbar (in Czech) and the 1563 New Kreuterbuch printed in Prague, but for this edition the scope was enlarged to include the equally fine zoological cuts and the genre scenes. The excellence of the illustrations is attested by the fact that Duhamel du Monceau saw fit to reprint 250 of the blocks in his Traité des Arbres et Arbustes in 1755. For an account of the history of the woodblocks see Hunt 90.
Adams D-672; Hunt 92; Nissen BBI 94.
Provenance: Bibliotheca Norimbergensis, printed circular bookplate on title and early shelfmarks on upper pastedown and spine -- Nürnberger Stadtbibliothek, ink stamp on title (with later duplicate stamp).