Remberti Dodonaei Mechliniensis medici caesari Stirpium historiae pemptades sex sive libri XXX. de Dodoens, Rembert - 1583

Antuerpiae: Ex officina Christophori Plantini, 1583. Folio (36 cm; 14"). [10] ff., 860 pp., [13] ff., illus.

Written and printed during the second decade of the Dutch Golden Age (1570–1670), this => first edition of Dodoens' Stirpium historiae pemptades sex is coveted today by collectors of printing for the excellent typography of the Plantin Press, by collectors of early illustration for van der Borcht's detailed woodcuts, and by collectors and scholars of natural history for the important contributions to botany that the author incorporates.
    Hunt says of this that it is the "First edition of Dodoens' last and most comprehensive botanical work, incorporating material from a number of his earlier books, including the Cruydeboeck"; it was the basis for Gerard's famous English herbal.
    Rembert Dodoens (1517–85), a Flemish physician and botanist, was fully immersed in the Renaissance method of pursuing knowledge, whether derived from ancient texts or from new discoveries and personal observation, or combining the best elements of both streams. That is what he did with his Cruydeboeck and with Stirpium historiae pemptades sex.
    Coming as it does during the first hundred years after the discovery of the New World and concomitant knowledge of New World plants, the Pemptades illustrates and discusses such new discoveries as maize, tobacco, mechoacan, and nopal.
    The => 1298 woodcut illustrations here were commissioned by Plantin from the Flemish artist Pieter van der Borcht (1545–1608), a pupil of Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Thomas Gloning (Rembert Dodoens und sein Cruyde Boeck) says van der Borcht is held to be one of the most gifted botanical painters of the 16th century.
    Provenance: College of Pharmacy of the City of New York.
    Evidence of readership: A reader of the late 16th century has corrected some of the text and has added interesting marginalia in Latin that expounds or expands on sections of it. A later reader, probably of the late 18th or early 19th century, has labeled some of the woodcut illustrations with the plant names using Linnaean and post-Linnaean taxonyms. For example some have "W" at the end of the Latin name, for Carl Ludwig Willdenow (1765–1812), others "Schmidt" for F.W. Schmidt (1764–96), most just have an "L" at the end, for Linnaeus.
    
    Pritzel 2350; Nissen, Botanische Buchillustration, 517; Hunt Botanical Catalogue 143; Nissen 517; DSB, IV,138–9. Voet, Plantin Press, 1101; Adams D722; Arents, Adds., 74; Alden & Landis 583/23; Index Aurel. 154.557; Bibliographia Belgica D117. Recent quarter mottled brown calf with green and red stone-pattern marbled paper sides; raised bands, each accented above and below by single gilt rule and with gilt center devices in five spine compartments. Library stamp as above on title-page and three other pages. Minor worming in some, a very few, margins, most notable in upper margins of pp. 260–89; gently age-toned, and a few leaves with browning or foxing; overall => a crisp, clean, decidedly desirable copy.