VICO, Enea. Le imagini delle donne auguste intagliate in istampa di rame… libro primo. Venice: Enea Vico and Vincenzo Valgrisi. 1557.
4to. 17th-century English speckled calf (rebacked), boards ruled in blind, edges sprinkled red; pp. [24], 9-212, [4], engraved title and 63 full-page illustrations, large woodcut initials, woodcut illustrations in text, final f. with woodcut printer’s device to verso, otherwise blank, blank corrections slips to ff. B2v, D4v; extremities a little worn; occasional offset, the odd mark, but generally very good; occasional pencil marginal notes in an early 19th-century hand; ownership signature dated “1780”, armorial bookplate of Charles Bathurst (see below), and bookseller’s ticket “C. E. Rappaport Libri Rari Roma” to front pastedown.
First edition, lusciously illustrated, of Enea Vico’s influential numismatic and antiquarian treatise on the women of the Roman imperial family.
Enea Vico (1523-1567) was an engraver from Parma, active at the courts of Cosimo I de’ Medici and Alfonso II d’Este. He was also a discerning collector of ancient coins, whose collection ranked among the most important in Italy by the mid-sixteenth century. During this mature phase of his career, Vico began work on Le imagini delle donne auguste with the financial support of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este (1509-1572), to whom the volume is dedicated. Conceived as the first in a projected series that was never completed, the book gathers biographies of the Augustae – the women of the Roman imperial family – accompanied by engravings of their coinage portraits. It was published in 1557, following a partial edition issued in 1550 by Anton Francesco Doni (1513-1574), which featured Vico’s engravings.
Le imagini delle donne auguste, “highly influential in the fields of antiquarian and numismatic studies”, exemplifies “the fusion of scholar and engraver roles that defined Vico’s output” (DBI, transl.). Each section begins with a plate reproducing the obverse of an ancient coin featuring the portrait of an Augusta, set within Vico’s inventive, and sometimes exuberant, Mannerist frames. This is followed by a biographical profile, drawing on literary, epigraphic, and numismatic sources. The author’s scrupulous attention to archaeological and numismatic detail is evident throughout: he systematically records the key data needed to identify each coin, including provenance, offering a wealth of information for antiquarians and collectors.
The book enjoyed immediate success, aided in Italy by Vico’s choice to write in the vernacular. A Latin translation by Natale Conti (1520-1582) appeared the following year (Venice, Paolo Manuzio, 1558), and met with equal acclaim, significantly broadening the work’s reach among European antiquarians and scholars.
Our copy is seemingly a second issue, as suggested by the presence of Roman numerals on the plates (cf. Mortimer).
Provenance: From the library of Charles Bathurst (1754-1831) of Lydney Park, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1812 and 1823. The notes in pencil are possibly in his hand.
Adams V-633; Mortimer, Italian, 532; EDIT 16 CNCE 54071. See Mariano, “VICO, Enea Giovanni”, DBI, vol. 99 (2020).
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