PLATO 1513

Description

ΑΠΑΝΤΑ ΤΑ ΤΟΥ ΠΛΑΤΩΝΟΣ – OMNIA PLATONIS OPERA, [Venice, in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, September 1513]

Bound in two volumes, folio (307 x 192mm.), woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso, text in Greek, with blank leaves 2/4 and ii4, bound in crushed tan morocco gilt with inset coloured portraits of Aldus and Marcus Musurus, gilt morocco doublures with blue morocco panel tooled to the design of a sixteenth-century arabesque binding with central stamp of a seated poet being crowned with a laurel wreath, lettered “Jos. Lassi et amicorum” on inside lower covers, spines gilt in compartments with red morocco lettering-pieces, in a single slipcase with brown morocco gilt sides with Aldine device stamped in gilt.

Editio princeps of the text of Plato.  It was edited by Marcus Musurus who had two manuscripts from the library of Bessarion at his disposal (today kept in the Marcian library: Marcianus Gr. 186 & 187), using some old and reliable manuscripts, and wrote one of the two prologues, a most lyrical Ode to Plato. In his own prologue in Latin, Aldus dedicates the book to Pope Leo X (Giovanni de Medici) as Ficino had dedicated his first Latin translation to Lorenzo de Medici, Leo’s father. This ambitious work had been announced as early as 1497 and planning had begun in 1506.

The book retains some endleaves from a previous binding, with watermarks of an armorial inhabited by a snake, similar to Heawood 688 and 690, both of which are dated to Paris in the 1680s.

References Renouard, Ι, 148 • Norman, I, 160 • Staikos, Charta, 336 • De Bure, 1257 • Hoffmann, III, 117 • Γαζής, Ι, 227 • Dibdin, II, 293 • Brunet, IV, 694 • Grässe, V, 314 • Legrand, I, 100 • Christies, 29/11/1999 • Bergé, 116 • Croiset, IV, 262 • EB, 3929, 198 • Maitaire, IΙ, 245 • Yemeniz, 119, 465 • Rewiczky, 23 • BMC/I, 524 • Ahmanson–Murphy, 97 • Adams, P-1436 • Didot, 342 • Marciana, 37 • Harles, I, 396 • Schweiger, 241 • Schöll, II, 420 • Fabricius, III, 128 • Staikos/Aldus, 56, Isaac 12828