Evangelium Sanctum Domini nostri Iesu Christi conscriptum a quatuor Evangelistis sanctis id est Matthaeo Marco Luca et Iohanne.
ref. 66827Romae Rome: In Typographia Medicea 1591. FIRST EDITION. Folio 33 x 21.5 cm. pp.9-4621 colophon as issued without title and preliminaries. Contemporary limp vellum with manuscript title on spine. With 149 text woodcuts by Leonardo Parassole c.1570-c.1630 after Antonio Tempesta 1555-1630 their monograms appearing on a number of the illustrations. The woodcuts are remarkable examples of Tempesta's work notable for their clarity of composition and their didactic narrative of the episodes depicted. Some occasional toning as usual and occasional light scattered foxing remnants of old paper label to spine vellum with some light soiling and rubbing to edges generally a very good copy in a handsome contemporary binding. First edition of the Gospels in Arabic and Latin - a landmark cultural encounter - and the editio princeps of the Arabic translation of the New Testament widely accepted as being the first successful printing of any Arabic text using moveable type and the first book ever published by the Medici Press in Rome. In 1584 the last year of the papacy of Gregory XIII who had constantly endeavoured to effect a union between the Church of Rome and the eastern Christians Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici the brother and later the successor of the Grand Duke of Tuscany founded a printing press in Rome with a vast selection of oriental types cut by the French typographer Robert Granjon. Run by a versatile orientalist Giovan Battista Raimondi the press had various aims. One was to produce propaganda which would attract the eastern Christians to Roman Catholicism. Another was to corner the publishing market in an area where typography was prohibited and to make a financial profit from the sale in the east of books printed in Arabic. The third aim was to further European knowledge and to provide good editions of Arabic versions of certain standard non-religious texts. These included the writings of Avicenna al-Idrisi's geographical compendium al-Tusi's adaptation of Euclid's text on geometry and various works on Arabic grammar and syntax. The first major publication was the 1591 edition of the Gospels. This copy has an interlinear Latin translation but the work was also issued solely in Arabic. It contains 149 fine woodcut illustrations made by Leonardo Parasole mainly after designs by one of the best known Florentine artists of his day Antonio Tempesta who owed much of his fame to the frescoes he painted in the Vatican and in a number of Roman palaces. The woodcut in the Gospel of St Mark of the presentation of the head of John the Baptist to Salome Mark 6:28 by a man in Turkish dress reminds us of the common association between the great enemy of Christendom in the sixteenth century and the ancient heathens. The Arabic text is printed in Robert Granjon's famous large fount generally considered the first satisfactory Arabic printing type; as all early printed editions of the Arabic Gospels it is based on the Alexandrian Vulgate cf. Darlow/M. 1636. The Latin version is by Leonardo Sionita. The work begins with page 9 without a title-page or any preliminary matter at all: "the intended prefatory matter was apparently never published" Darlow/M.; these first eight pages were not supplied until the 1619 re-issue. Brunet 1122-1123 Romae [Rome]: In Typographia Medicea, 1591. hardcover
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