Bibbia Martini

Antonio Martini

The Old and New Testament. Sacred Bible according to the Vulgate translated into Italian and declared with annotations..... Illustrated edition with one hundred magnificent plates. Milan, Pagnoni, undated (1862?); cm. 29x21 approximately; pp. 891+855(+14 geographical plates)+1070+1029; period binding in half leather, with red leather spine and impressed and gilded inscriptions.

Interesting ancient and period edition, imposing work in four large distinct volumes, each in beautiful period binding with red leather spine embellished with gilded inscriptions and decorations, each volume equipped with a magnificent frontispiece in polychrome lithography, very evocative, and very expressive and of great artistic value are also the numerous illustrative plates, with well over the 100 engravings declared on the title page: in reality the work contains overall - in the four large volumes - 5 frontispiece-title pages lithographed in color, 1 plate with the portrait of the author (Martini), and approximately 53+14+24+56 = 147 approximately (steel-engraved plates), to which must also be added the 14 geographical plates (geographical maps with colored contours, relating to the cartography of the Holy Land or Palestine, or the Earthly Paradise, Holy Land at the time of the Crusades, etc.); all plates inserted outside the text, executed by skilled 19th-century engraver artists: engravings mainly by Santamaria, Guzzi, Clerici, Gandini, Buccinelli, and Sivalli (from Parma), all true works of art! Engravings taken from paintings by artists of the past, including Raphael, Guercino, Sueur, Rubens, Andran, Correggio, Barbieri, Carracci, Zucchi, Mola, Court, Copley, Gros, Bol, Mignard,... (plates also worthy of being individually and distinctly inserted under mats and framed!); and also very beautiful are the colored frontispieces, present one for each volume, allegorical and of great value, each different from the other, the first volume in addition to the frontispiece also has a lithographed title page in color (that is, the volume has two title pages, one lithographic in color and the other normal printed in black, while the other three remaining volumes have the title page in black and the lithographed frontispieces in color), all published by the well-known Milanese publisher-typographer Pagnoni (the color lithographs are from the Bertotti printing house in Milan); magnificent not only the colored frontispieces, symbolic and allegorical, but also all the other engraved plates, rich in scenes and characters, each relating to a biblical episode or relating to the life of Jesus; obviously impossible to be able to synthesize the content of the work, which however unfolds in the various and usual biblical phases, from Genesis to Exodus, with Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Books of Ruth, of Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, Job, Psalms, Book of Proverbs, Book of Ecclesiastes, of Wisdom, Acts of the Apostles, Letters of St. Paul, of St. John, of Jude, Apocalypse of St. John. Work of great artistic, historical-documentary, devotional, bibliographic value. Good general conservation, signs and defects of use and period, usual widespread foxing, but family copy, probably never leafed through; (the attached images show some details of the entire work, any further information upon request). Warning: the count of the plates as declared and personally verified - that is 147 plates for the black and white engravings alone - could differ slightly from the actual one, due to a possible counting error of the plates, but any discrepancy is however very relative and irrelevant compared to the total mass of engravings which is however about 50% higher than those declared by the publisher in the title pages of the work: therefore the work is offered as is, without any guarantee regarding the possible integrity or consistency of the plates, plates that were often placed by bookbinders also in different quantities in volumes of contemporary or similar editions; to consider further: that from the comparison of the present edition with the catalogued one, although a direct comparison was not possible, however the catalogued one clearly appears with a lower number of plates compared to this one (in fact approximately 149 plates are cited overall, compared to the approximately 161 present here, a number to which must also be added the lithographs of the frontispiece-title pages and the portrait of the author)