?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
Ursinus, Fulvius (1529-1600) Illustrium Imagines, ex Antiquis Marmoribus, Nomismatibus, et Gemmis Expressae.
Antwerp: Plantin, 1606.
Quarto, two parts in one volume, engraved title page, (?lacking typographical title page) edited by Johannes Faber, illustrated with 168 full-page engravings by Theodore Galle depicting ancient Greek and Roman figures based on carved gems, minted coins, and sculptural marbles; bound in contemporary parchment over boards, spine painted black and tooled in gilt, old label and shelf mark to spine; ex libris Alexandre Lenoir (1761-1813) with his signed accession not toe the Musée des Monuments Français on back flyleaf dated "1 fructidor an. 13"; i.e., 18 August 1804; 19th century American religious bookplates inside front board; light-colored waterstaining to bottom margin of final third of leaves, 7 3/4 x 5 3/4 in.
Lenoir established the Musée des Monuments Français to preserve French antiquities during the tumultuous time of the French Revolution and the establishment of Napoleon I's reign. Founded in 1795, just two years after the Louvre, Lenoir dealt with the massive number of masterpieces removed from churches, monasteries, and abbeys when the state de-commissioned all religious properties in 1789. The Musée survived until 1816, when the House of Bourbon returned to power after the first fall of Napoleon in 1814.
Ursinus, also known as Fulvio Orsini, was an Italian historian and collector of antiquities who amassed a vast library of rare books, manuscripts and art, including the Vergilius Vaticanus, an illustrated manuscript of Virgil's Aeneid and Georgics created in 400 CE. It is one of only two surviving illustrated manuscript versions, and one of the oldest surviving sources of the text.
