BOOK, Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, 1547.

Giovanni Boccaccio:

Della Geneologia de gli dei. I quindeci libri di M. Giovanni Boccaccio sopra la origine et discendenza di tutti gli Dei de’ gentili.

In Vinegia (Venice), Comino da Trino di Monferrato, 1547. 4to. 21 x 15 cm. [8] + 286 + [18] leaves. Woodcut device to title and final page, fulIpage woodcut genealogical tree on leaf A5v. Numerous woodcut initials throughout, often 3 or 4 to a page, and sometimes 6!

Contemporary limp boards, a little worn, soiled and scribbled in ink, small area of loss to spine, loss of text to top of leaf A7 restored with 8 Iines of meticulously handwritten facsimile in ink (including initial!), blank upper outer corner of the central part of the book gnawed, some very slight worming, faint marginal dampstaining toward end, old annotations in ink to final page.

Second edition of Betussi’s 1545 translation, the first into Italian. Boccaccio’s mythological encyclopedia was first published in 1472 in Latin.

See description.