Boccaccio's Genealogiae deorum

Boccaccio's Genealogiae deorum
Vindelinus de Spira, 1472
BOCCACCIO, Giovanni (1313-1375). Genealogiae deorum. With additions by Dominicus Silvester and Raphael Zovenzonius. Venice: Vindelius de Spira, 1472.

The Redgrave copy of the first edition of Boccaccio’s humanist encyclopedia of classical mythology, with illuminated initials. Commissioned by Hugo IV, King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, this immense treatise is divided into fifteen books which do not merely list names but reveal Boccaccio's incredible breadth of reading and his ardent scholarly commitment to breathing life into the ancient world. The Genealogy became the first influential work in modern European scholarship to include quotations, translations, and variegated analyses of passages from Greek literature, and it is the first scholarly work to make a significant use of Homer. For at least two centuries this text continued to be of great importance to writers and scholars. It also includes biographical information about Petrarch and Dante, as well as Boccaccio’s Defense of Poetry. This first edition reproduces the Vulgate text on the basis of an unidentified manuscript; the series of genealogical charts (possibly present in the manuscript which served as copy-text) are not reproduced, although Vindelinus left blank spaces for them which vary in size from two thirds to an entire page. An exceptionally beautiful copy of one of the intellectual jewels of the Italian Renaissance; the present copy also contains a manuscript poem in humanist script about Dante’s Beatrice. HC 3315*; GW 4475; BMC V 162; BSB-Ink B-583; Bod-inc B-369; IGI 1796; Goff B-749; ISTC ib00749000.

Median folio (331 x 221mm). 295 leaves (of 296, without blank G12). 37 illuminated floral initials on particolor grounds, 22 of which slightly smaller on headings of index, smaller red ink initials and paragraph marks (a few small marginal paper repairs, larger repaired tear affecting text on D1, some occasional soiling and worming mostly at ends). Modern brown morocco by James Macdonald, faded title in ink on bottom edge, marbled paper flyleaves. Provenance: Domenico Margaritis (fl. 18th century, Italian lawyer; stamps on first leaf) – Gilbert R. Redgrave (1844-1941, British bibliographer and art historian, former president of the Bibliographical society in London; bookplate and manuscript ex-libris).