Ποικίδης ἱστορίας, βιβλία ΙΔ … — Rome 1545

Ποικίδης ἱστορίας, βιβλία ΙΔ … — Rome, Antonio Blado, January 1545.

4to (220 x 162) mm.

α-ω⁴ Α-Δ⁴ 1-3⁴: (4), 111), (1) leaves, (1) blank, (1) leaf with device on verso. Two manuscript notes on leaf 55v.

Provenance: Early ownership entry on title below the printer’s mark: Joann. Ducarus. Ducarus, a young Livonian nobleman, immatriculated at Rostock university in 1569; he was a student of the German humanist Johannes Caselius (1533-1613), who praises him in a letter to his student Wilhem August, the later Duke of Harburg, as in bonis artibus praeclare expolitus. PennLibraries owns a Nichomachean Ethics printed in Greek – Strasbourg, Rihel, 1563 – and annotated by Johannes Ducarus.

Contemporary limp vellum with vertical manuscript title in a most beautiful Greek script. A fine unsophisticated copy.

The fine type (20 lines = 89-90 mm) was cut by Giovanni Onorio da Maglie, and first used in volumes 2-4 of Eustathius‘ commentary of Homer – Rome, Blado, 1543. (See E. Layton, The History of a Sixteenth Century Greek Type Revised, in: The Historical Review. I. 2004. pp. 39-50, p. 42).