Pomona Italiana, Ossia trattato degli Alberi Fruttiferi, di Giorgio Gallesio. 4 vols. First edition.

Pisa: Co’ Caratteri de’ FF. Amoretti, Presso Niccoló Capurro, 1817- [1839]. 4 folio volumes, 31 x 44.4 cm. Large paper copy. 19th Century half green morocco with marbled boards. Some pages with stains and foxing. but most very fresh. The plates were printed in colors which was then much more expensive and always more elegant than handcoloring black inked printed pages. With 155 color stipple engravings. The plates are not numbered but some copies have as many as 163 plates....The Italian artists are : Giuseppe CAROCCI, Alessandro CONTARDI, Francesco CORSI, Paolo FUMAGALLI, Luigi GARIBBO, Luigi GIARRE, Carlo LASINIO, Tomaso NASI, Giuseppe PERA, Stefano RINALDI, Bernardino ROSASPINA, Antonio SERANTONI, Antonio VERICO…engraved after A. BASOLI, Giuseppe BAZOLI, Luigi BISI, Carolina & Isabella BOZZOLINI, Giuseppe BUCHERELLI, D. DELPINO, Pellina Piuma GALLESIO, Sofia GIORDANO, Ferdinando MORI, Domenico del PINO, Daniele DEL Ré, Antonio SERANTONI, M. VERNERO…OCLC Number / Unique Identifier:558753573....FIRST EDITION OF THE FINEST ITALIAN WORK ON FRUIT. "It is extremely rare and its interest is enhanced by the knowledge that it is one of the few examples outside of England in which aquatint has been used successfully" (Dunthorne). "Before Gallesio began this enormous work, published in fourty-one parts from 1817 to 1839, he had already published his Traité du Citrus, which explains the reason for the lack of oranges and lemons in a catalogue of Italian fruit... Gallesio's fruit garden in Savona was not his main occupation, for he was a lawyer and a civil servant as well as a botanist, whose experiments on the development of varieties of fruit were quoted later by Charles Darwin. Gallesio's Pomona was a major contribution to the study of pomology in Italy" (Raphael Oak Spring Pomona). Dunthorne 118; Great Flower Books p. 57; Raphael Oak Spring Pomona 52; Nissen BBI 683........................ 4 volumes in-folio, demi-maroquin vert, dos à nerfs orné (reliure fin XIXe s.).Brunet, II, 1466 (« Pour la beauté de l'exécution, cet ouvrage ne le cède en rien à ceux du même genre que l'on a publiés en France depuis une cinquantaine d'années ») ; Dunthorne, 118 (« A very fine work » ; Great Flower Books, 92-95 ; Oak Spring Pomona, 52 ; Nissen, BBI, 683 (3).