BORJA (BORIA), Juan de.
Emblemata moralia.
Berlin, Johann Michael Rudiger, Ulrich Liebpert, 1697. Small 4to. With large engraved device on title-page, 100 finely engraved circular emblems by J.C. Schott. 18th-century blind-tooled mottled sheepskin. [6], 201, [1 blank] pp.
€ 5,500
First Latin edition of a Spanish emblem book, translated by Ludovicus Camerarius, first published in Spanish at Prague in 1581. Each of the 100 moralistic emblems appears on a recto with a 2-line verse below it and a motto and Latin prose explanation on the facing page. The emblems depict all sorts of subjects: animals, trees and other plants, vases, buildings, the elements, lightning hitting a temple, lamps, a cobweb, a sword, sailing ships, a terrestrial globe, Heracles in his lionskin holding a celestial globe, Noah's Ark on mount Ararat, a huge pair of glasses in the sky above a landscape, and many more.
From the library of Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753), with his name stamped on an endleaf. A few leaves at the beginning and end browned, but otherwise in very good condition and with generous margins. Landwehr, German Emblem Books 137; Praz, pp. 281-282; VD 17, 1:059502E.
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