Le Imagini de I dei degli antichi nelle qvali si contengono gl’Idoli, Riti, ceremonie, & alter cose appartenenti alla Religione de gli Antichi ...

Venice: Vincentio Valgrisi, 1571. Hardcover. Good+. 4to (195 x 140 mm). Woodcut printer’s device of Valgrisi (serpent entwined around tau cross) to title. Pagination: [36], 1-566pp. Signatures: a-c(4); d(6); A-Z(4); Aa-Zz(4); Aaa-Zzz(4); Aaaa (3 of 4, lacking final blank). 88 full-page copperplate engravings by Bolognino Zaltieri. Text in roman and italics. Woodcut chapter headpieces. Dedicated to Cardinal d’Este and dated September 1569. 18th-century vellum with morocco label “CARTA IMAGI,” edges stained red, endpapers renewed; (title-page with closed tear and cancelled inscriptions, minor dampstaining throughout, few pages very lightly browned, endpapers inscribed in modern hand, spine slightly chipped with joints splitting). Modern armorial bookplate of Bibliotheque I.G. Schorsch on the front pastedown. 20th-century ownership inscription from Nashville, Tennessee “1-22-57.” 

First illustrated Venetian edition of Vincenzo Cartari’s treatise on the Greco-Roman pantheon, his Imagini de I dei degli antichi, “Images of the Gods of the Ancients.” Cartari’s text, composed in Italian, also appeared a decade after this edition in Lyon in Latin and French, as well as the original Italian, with Barthélemy Honorat in 1581. Cartari’s popular textbook work on ancient gods and mythology was written for those who wanted to quickly learn the mythological stories and attributes of classical Gods. His work focused on an iconographical description of the gods and explained their various guises and paraphernalia. This is the first edition to be illustrated in vivid woodcuts attributed to Bolognino Zaltieri (fl. 1555-1576), printer and publisher in Venice. The images provided the Renaissance viewer with some of the most imaginative iconography that was consulted and imitated by poets, painters, sculptors, and students of ancient religions. Cartari remains relatively obscure to history, best he is best known for this text, ad standard guide to the allegorical and emblematic symbolism of classical mythology. Adams C-788; Brunet I: 1601; Mortimer Italian 108; not in Praz or Landwehr.