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MINIATURE BOOK OF LOVE EMBLEMS, WITH 81 ENGRAVINGS
CAMERARIUS (CAMERARIO, CALMER), Giorgius. Emblemata Amatoria.
Venice, Pietro Paolo Tozzi (colophon: Venice, printed by Giacomo Sarzina, 1627). Small oblong 16mo (7 x 9 cm). A Latin emblem book, with 83 poems and 81 full-page engravings (4.5 x 6 cm) on integral leaves, namely the engraved title-page with 4 cupids, the full-page engraved arms of the dedicatee, Venetian Senator Dominico Molino, 75 love-emblem engravings and 4 engravings of tombs. Further with 1 woodcut tailpiece (plus 1 repeat), 2 woodcut decorated initials (2 series) and decorations built up from 5 different cast fleurons. Set in roman type with incidental italic and Greek. Contemporary tanned sheepskin, gold-tooled spine and board edges, edges sprinkled red.
| Orders and Information | € 9500 |
First (and only early) edition of a miniature book of love emblems in Latin, with eighty-three original poems by Camerarius and 75 emblematic engravings mostly inspired by Dutch predecessors. Most show Cupid with his bow and arrows in a wide variety of scenes taken from classical mythology and from daily life. When Cupid is not busy shooting arrows at lovers, he is depicted painting a portrait, sailing a ship, working at a forge, holding up the heavens as Atlas, using a surveyor's level, being burnt at the stake, watering a garden, playing dice, ploughing a field, hanging a man by his hands (the tortures of love!), etc. The armorial dedication engraving and the first 74 love-emblem engravings each appear on rectos with a poem on the facing verso. The last love-emblem engraving shows Narcissus, with a fourteen-page poem, followed by two poems without engravings ("Lycoris" and "Oliverio Cavæo"). The last five engravings, also facing poems, show the tombs of Henri IV (1562-1610), King of France and Navarre; Paolo Leoni (d. 1590), Bishop of Farrera; Thomas Dempster (1579-1625), Scottish historian (who wrote a brief biography of his friend Camerarius in his posthumous Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum); and the author's father Patricius Camerarius. A final poem ("Manibus Octavii Boturini Veronensis") completes the text.
Little is known about Camerarius, who studied in Scotland and Paris before settling in or returning to Italy. His preliminary note to the reader acknowledges the influence of the Emblemata Amatoria of Daniel Heinsius (1608) and Otto Vaenius (1618), and many of the plates were clearly inspired by Crispijn de Passe's in Tronus Cupidinis (1618), but Camerario shows more emblems than any of these. The Vaenius and De Passe (and Heinsius's 1601 predecessor to his Emblemata Amatoria) were also published in a similar oblong 16mo or oblong 24mo format. Camerarius's text was translated into Italian in 1898. The book is often described as an oblong 24mo, but it is an oblong Pot 16mo, with a 3-hats watermark, similar to Heawood 2597 (ca. 1627?) but mostly without any counter mark. Leaf K8 is cancelled as usual and as intended.
With the 1905 bookplate of Lieutenant Charles Stanislaus Capelle (b. 1873), a U.S. military surgeon. In very good condition and nearly untrimmed, with a couple small marginal tears and an occasional spot. The gilding of the tooling is largely lost, but the binding is otherwise good. A lovely little book of love emblems, with 81 plates.
