De humani corporis fabrica libri septem

Venice: Franciscus Francesci and Johann Criegher, 1568. 4th Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 4th Edition. Hardcover. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. Folio (317 x 215 mm). [12], 510, [46] pp. Large woodcut device on title, numerous woodcut anatomical illustrations (some full-page), woodcut initials and head-pieces, leaf 2d5 (p.321) contains figures to be cut out and superimposed on the illustration on 2d3 is left intact in this copy. Signatures: *6 A-2Y6 Zz8. Bound in 17th century full vellum, spine with 5 raised bands faintly handlettered in second compartment, original endpapers (spine chipped at head with loss and with tear at foot, upper board somewhat bowed, minor rubbing, spotting and soiling). Crisp and clean internally throughout with some light browning in places; clean tear to f.K4 without loss, small wormhole near gutter of final 3 leaves. Provenance: partly torn bookseller's ticket to front pastedown (Antiquariat Lange & Springer, Berlin). A fine copy. ----

THIRD ILLUSTRATED EDITION and the fourth edition of the text. The illustrations here are reduced copies of the blocks cut for the first edition of 1543. "The copying was done from the Oporin edition of 1555 and includes eight additions made in 1555. The Basel woodcuts are attributed to Jan Stephan van Calcar, a pupil of Titian. Franceschi states in his dedication to Antonio Montecatini that Giovanni Chrieger cut these Venice copies" (Mortimer). "In 1564, the year of his death, Vesalius stopped in Venice on his way to the Holy Land and submitted his last book, a reply to Fallopius, to the printer Francesco Senense for publication. This same printer, four years later, in collaboration with a Pomeranian engraver, Johannes Criegher, whose name he generously coupled with his own as printer, ventured to print a complete text of the 1555 Fabrica in a smaller format and with all of the wood-blocks recut in smaller size. [. . .] 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 [. . .] This edition was a foreign book, printed without licence, there being no regulation at the time (1568) to prevent this and it was a common enough practice" (Cushing, pp. 92-93).
References: Choulant-Frank, p.182; Cushing VI.A.-4; Osler 569; Waller 9902; Adams V-606; Mortimer, Harvard Italian 529; NLM/Durling 4580; Machiels V-228. - Visit our website to see more images!