Indice de gl'uomini illustri, del Sig. Ieronimo Ruscelli. Opera utilissima à chiunque vorrà hauer notitia, e valersi di tutti i nomi, & conditioni de gli uomini, & donne, & Dei, celebrati così da Poeti, come da gl'Istorici, e da Filosofi.

Venetia: Appresso Comin da Trino di Monferrato, 1572 First edition. Eighteenth-century half calf over speckled boards, gilt spine with brown morocco label, decorative pastedown endpapers. . Small quarto. Woodcut printer's device on title, woodcut headband and decorative initial letters. Edges of covers rubbed, light dampstain in bottom margin of first twenty or so leaves. Late nineteenth-century armorial bookplate on front pastedown, ink inscription of the grandson of the owner of the bookplate. A very good copy. Ruscelli (d. 1566), a prolific scholar and writer, was born in Viterbo. He is also known as Alessio Piedmontese or Alexis of Piedmont. His (truncated) best-known works include Del modo di comporre in versi (1559), Commentari della lingua italiana (1576), and the wonderful illustrated book, Le imprese illustri, containing 135 copper-engravings of emblems and devices (Mortimer, Harvard Italian, 449). He was also the first commentator of his friend, Ariosto. The present posthumously-published work is a biographical dictionary, identifying hundreds of men and women and their contributions. (Inventory #: 7632)