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EXPANDED ED. OF VONDEL EMBLEM BOOK, WITH 73 ENGRAVINGS
VONDEL, Joost van den. De Vernieuwde Gulden Winckel der Kunstlievende Nederlanders. ... Hier is by ghevoeght het tweede deel: waerin 't welvaren der vereenighde Nederlanden, en de droeve uutvaert van Henricus de Groote, … neffens andere stichtelijcke dinghen, ... worden ... ghestelt.
Amsterdam, Dirck Pietersz. Pers (colophon: printed by Paulus van Ravesteyn), 1622. 4to. With 73 engraved half-page illustrations in text, a woodcut publisher's device on the title-page, a woodcut printer's device above the colophon, 7 decorated woodcut initial letters and 1 woodcut tailpiece. Set in roman types with passages in italic, textura and civilité. Contemporary vellum, new endpapers.
| Orders and Information | € 1500 |
Slightly enlarged second edition of the Dutch emblem book Den Gulden Winckel (1613), adding some new text, replacing two emblem plates (28 and 42) and adding a new second part (pp. 74-93), containing a shipping hymn (not the same as Vondel's from 1623: Lof der Zee-vaert), an elegy on Henry IV, King of France, and a pietistic poem. The other 71 emblems are printed from the plates of the 1613 edition, which had previously been used in Jan Moerman's De Cleyn Werelt (1608), also printed by Pers. They were engraved by Gerard de Jode (1509-1591) after drawings by Crispin van den Broeck (1524-1591), illustrator for Plantin, and had first appeared in Laurens van Haecht Goidtsenhoven's Microcosmos (Antwerp 1579). The Gulden Winckel went through at least nine editions, but only the first two contain the present illustrations.
Pers was one of the most important publishers of emblem books in the Netherlands. Besides publishing emblem books by Coornhert, Heinsius and Vondel, he translated Ripa's emblem "guide" Iconologia (1644) and published his own Bellerophon (1614). The motto in his device is supposed to be an anagram for "Dirck Pieterssoon," but seems to contain an extra e and i.
Vondel (1587-1679), generally considered the greatest Dutch poet of all time, is most famous for his classic dramas Lucifer and Gijsbrecht van Aemstel. A self-taught Renaissance man who didn't attend school in his youth, he grew interested in poetry, joined the Amsterdam chamber of rhetoric "Het Wit Lavendel" and published his first play Pascha in 1610. He learned Latin and Greek to study classical authors like Seneca and Sophocles. The esteem he enjoys today was hard won, his scabrous play Lucifer and his Catholicism having brought his reputation into question in past centuries.
Very good copy, with only a few small stains, none affecting the text or illustrations. Unger noted a copy with Vondel's portrait added, but it was clearly not part of the edition (Schuytvlot notes that it is in none of the four copies he lists). The binding shows minor stains, and only one original endleaf survives (with a manuscript reference to Jan ten Brink's 1897 Geschiedenis der Nederlandse Letterkunde, p. 408). A classic emblem book from the great Dutch poet Vondel, with the emblems printed from sixteenth-century copperplates.
