BooXII Caesarum Romanorum Imagines. E numismatibus expressae, et historica narratione illustrata. By Franciscus Sweertius. 30 pp. Illustrated with engraved frontispiece and 12 engraved portraits with elaborate borders by Hans Vredeman de Vries. Small 4to., 200 x 140 mm, bound in eighteenth-century Dutch calf, spine gilt. Antwerp: Ionnus Baptista Vrintius, 1603.
First Edition in book form with the text by Franciscus Sweertius (1567-1629). A finely engraved series of portraits of the Roman Emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, each set in elaborate grotesque borders designed by Hans Vredeman de Vries. Vredeman de Vries (ca. 1527-1604) was a much celebrated Dutch architect and draughtsman whose model books and works on perspective disseminated the new artistic innovations of Renaissance Italy to Northern Europe. The present borders feature a harmoniously intertwined cornucopia of ornamental and allegorical subject matter that surely would have been used as models for artists and designers.
The plates first appeared as a suite entitled Icones Duodecim Caesarum Romanum published by Gerard de Jode around 1590 then appearing for the first time in book form in the present edition. Both the suite and book are rare. Spine with small professional repairs, a light marginal water stain on five leaves, some scattered spotting, overall a very nice copy with good impressions.
PROVENANCE: Phillip Carteret Webb with his bookplate on the verso of the front fly-leaf.
H. Mielke on Vredeman de Vries:
Hans Vredeman de Vries. Verzeichnis der Stichwerke und Beschreibung seines Stils … (1967).
Ornamentprenten I, Rijksprentenkabinet, 174 (Ed. of 1612, plates only). Funck, p 398.
Berlin Katalog 227 (plate series De Jode).
Hollstein IX, p. 202, nos. 445-457 (plate-series De Jode)
