Pomponii Gaurici neapolitani, ... De sculptura seu statuaria: libellus sane elegantissimus, pictoribus, sculptoribus,
statuarijs, architectis &c. mire utilis, &c lectu iucundu. Item Aeglogae lepidissimae,
duae....

Antwerp: Ioannes Grapheus, 1528. Second Printing. Very Good. Octavo (16 cm) [64] leaves, signed a-h in 8s. Full-page "Charity" printer's device (thought to have been designed by Pieter Coecke van Aelst) on last page. Italic type. Title page elaborated at an early date in ink with image of a chalice or urn. Several ownership inscriptions in ink on title page. Marginal notes in manuscript on a4r and in lower margin of f3v. Manuscript note canceled on g6v. Bound in recent full calf with gilt and
blind-tooled panels in period style, with author's name stamped in gilt on upper board. Pages somewhat toned, occasional stains.

References: BM Dutch, p. 82.

Pomponio Gaurico was the youngest of Giovanni Pontano's students, and the last to carry Pontano's Neapolitan brand of Humanism into the 16th century. (From 1512 he held the chair in Humanistic Studies at the University of Naples.) His treatise on bronze sculpture came out of his studies at the University of Padua, and was published at Florence in 1504. It was quickly recognized as a fundamental statement of art theory, written in elegant Latin (for which Pontano's students were justly famous).

The second edition, offered here, was printed in Antwerp, Belgium. It is significant not only as an early printing of a perennial text, but as evidence of the spread of Italian humanism, with its principles of proportion, perspective, and ideal beauty, to Northern European artists and thinkers. It was one of the first books off the press of the young printer, Joannis Grapheus, relying on a text prepared by his brother, the humanist Cornelius Scribonius Grapheus, who had traveled in Italy and probably became familiar with Gaurico's work there. In a preface, Cornelius describes the text as "a rare bird, an uncommon treasure, a textbook useful not only for sculptors or painters, but also to all writers, whether they be poets or historians or philosophers. It is a book to be cherished in the heart, admired, redolent of antiquity and richly abounding in learning.