Lot 684
Plotinus
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographss | 10 May 2007
Description
Operum philosophicorum omnium libri liv. in sex Enneades distributi ex antiquiss. codicum fide nunc primum Graecè editi, cum Latina Marsilii Ficini interpretatione & commentatione (with the Life of Plotinus by Porphyrius). Basel: Perneas Lecythus [i.e. Pietro Perna], 1580, folio, parallel Greek and Latin text, woodcut device on title, Ss8 and final recto, woodcut initials, woodcut portrait of Ficino on verso of a6, contemporary calf, lower corner of title restored, some spotting and occasional light discolouration, damp-staining chiefly confined to upper margin, title with small ink-stain and single wormhole in upper margin, rebacked, scrapes neatly repaired
Footnote
Note: First edition of the original Greek of the writings of the founder of Neoplatonism.
Ficino's Latin translation was first published in 1492 in Florence, the home of renaissance Platonism. Books 2 and 3 deal with physics and cosmology, and chapter 13 of book 2 contains a tract on astrology. Adams P1597, Caillet 8752.
Provenance: John Alfred Spranger, Trin. Coll. Cambridge, bookplate