Stock #: ST11615           $5900
PJP Catalog 58.229

     DURANTE CASTORE.
HERBARIO NOVO. (Venice: Sessa  1602)   330 x 225 mm. (13 x 8 3/4"). 6 p.l. 492 [32] [19] [1] pp.    Second Edition.    Pleasing old (contemporary?) limp vellum flat spine with later tan morocco label renewed endpapers and cloth ties.    Sessa's charming cat and mouse printer's device on title page and in colophon two woodcut portraits and 1075 BOTANICAL WOODCUTS (965 in the text and 110 on 19 pages following the text).       Extremities a little rubbed vellum a bit soiled but the binding perfectly satisfactory with no serious defects. A small portion of one corner torn away a few leaves with minor foxing (one preliminary leaf more obviously freckled) other trivial imperfections in the text but EXTREMELY FINE INTERNALLY nevertheless the leaves unusually bright fresh and clean.

Published in 1585 at the direction of Pope Sixtus V and authored by his personal physician this popular Italian herbal describes the properties and uses of medicinal herbs from Europe the West Indies and Asia and provides us with very detailed and often whimsical woodcut illustrations of salubrious plants. In addition to being a botanist and a doctor Castore Durante (ca. 1529-90) was a poet and he wrote the Latin verses that appear as part of many descriptions. In the entry for the arbor tristis for example Durante compares the "melancholy tree" to a nymph and the fanciful woodcut depicts a tree whose trunk is the body of a woman and whose limbs--with carefully detailed oversized leaves--are her arms stretching up to the moon and stars above. Many of the woodcuts include a tiny human or animal either tending or eating the plant and a mere sprig of a fruit bush is shown as a full-grown tree in the midst of a landscape. These flights of imagination are the work of Leonardo Parasole an Italian engraver and woodcutter who took the name of his better-known wife engraver and designer Isabella Parasole (sometimes mistakenly credited for the work here). Durante whose position as the doctor of the pope no doubt contributed to his authority and to the market for his works wrote other family medical guides on hygiene and nutrition.

Durling 1342 (citing the first printing of 1585); Nissen BBI 569; Wellcome I 1962.