La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilio by COLONNA, Francesco - 1545

Venice: Sons of Aldus Manutius, 1545. First thirteen leaves with lower outer corners renewed, most other leaves with smaller marginal conservation, occasionally touching or affecting a few letters. A very handsome copy, the cuts in fine condition. Folio (29.1 x 19.4 cm). Roman type, occasional Greek and Hebrew type. 170 fine woodcuts (9 full-page), printer's device on title, repeated on verso of final leaf. 5- to 9-line initial spaces with guide-letters. Later vellum preserving earlier morocco spine label. Provenance: some occasional neat, possibly late 18th/early 19th-century marginalia, occasionally in Greek. Second edition, reprinting page-for-page Aldus's 1499 edition, widely considered the most beautiful book of the 15th century. The 1545 edition, printed by Aldus's heirs, re-using the exceptional series of woodcut illustrations. The Paduan miniaturist, Benedetto Bordone, has been advanced as the artist of the illustrations (two blocks are signed 'b'), but the attribution remains unproven. Six blocks have been re-cut: b4v, b5r (2), e2v, e5r and x2r. Despite its claim to be "corrected," the text on n1v and n8r has been transposed, as it was in the first edition. "Cette reimpression est plus rare que l'edit. Originale" (Sander). Adams C-2414; Mortimer Harvard Italian 131; Renouard, Alde, pp.133-34; Essling Pt. I, vol.2:2, no.119; Sander 2057.