VESALIUS, ANDREAS De humani corporis fabrica.

VESALIUS, ANDREAS. 1514-1564. De humani corporis fabrica. Venice: Franciscus Francisci and Johannes Criegher, 1568. 2 parts in one volume. Small folio, 295 x 210 . Large woodcut device on title, replete with woodcut anatomical illustrations, leaf 2d5 present with figures intact on one sheet and not cut-out and superimposed. Full limp vellum over boards, spine handsomely title in a contemporary calligraphic hand. Internally, first blank worn, some inner marginal detachment from textblock at p. 10/11 but holding strong, some occasional upper marginal damp-staining, occasional marginal worming, some occasional toning possibly re-cased in the original binding. Generally, a handsome and very presentable copy in the original binding. Ref: Adams V-606; Cushing VI.A-4; Harvard Italian 529; Osler 569.

Provenance: approx. five separate early inscriptions to first blank indicating that this copy was used by various doctors at a near contemporary Italian medical and surgical institute.

This is the fourth edition of the text and the third illustrated edition, published four years after the death of Vesalius. Cushing makes note that "The new woodcuts for the illustrations, however, were so well executed that the engraver might almost have passed for the same person who in Venice at the behest of Vesalius had cut the original blocks for the larger work. It must have been not only an expensive undertaking but a venturesome one." Indeed, in an unusual example of professional generosity, the printer gives equal credit on the title page to the Pomeranian engraver Johannes Criegher, without whose artistry the work would not have come to such a successful fruition.

An esteemed edition, increasingly scarce in commerce, of a milestone work in human anatomy and the history of science