Cavalieri, Giovanni Battista de
First and only edition, a superb suite of prints of which little is known, by Cavalieri, depicting ‘monsters’ and prodigies, bringing together classical and contemporary marvels, broadly copying Burgkmair's designs; apparently, these are the earliest appearance of Hans Burgkmair's designs extant in print. Burgkmair's woodcuts would eventually appear much later in the supplement to Giovanni Botero's Delle relationi universali, Venice, 1617 and which would constitute “the first serious study of native life and dress made for publication in a European travel book” (Walter Oakeschott). No edition containing Burgkmair's original blocks is known before their 17th century use in the supplement to Botero.
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4to, (280 x 211 mm). Engraved title and 18 etched plates. Contemporary limp vellum, front joint cracked; blue cloth slipcase. Some pale marginal soiling and scattered foxing, overall in excellent condition.
Cavalieri here translates Burgkmair's woodcuts into etching and engraving and updated it to the northern repertory for an Italian audience attuned to antiquarian and travel literature, depicting figures from Egypt, Arabia and Ethiopia, and the skiapod of classical antiquity with an enormous foot which he uses to shade himself from the sun.
Cavalieri (circa 1525 - circa 1601), born at Lagherino and died at Rome, etched and engraved numerous series of prints after great Italian masters in a style that resembles that of Aeneas Vico.
The final three etchings are not after Burgkmair and the first two of these are presented in a variant style (without ruled borders enclosing the text): the first showing a set of Siamese twins from the town of Cingoli in 1584 and the second showing a man without legs, balanced on a table, from Rome, 1585.
Provenance: McCarron, 1990; Arthur & Charlotte Vershbow, Christies, New York, April 2013.
An exceedingly rare suite of prints, not recorded in any of the standard bibliographies.
According to OCLC, we locate copies at the British Library and Nukat Union Catalogue of Polish Libraries.
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