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Tag Archives: philosopher

Virtue and Knowledge

14 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Alexander the Great Gualterus de Castellione, allegory, battle, Biblioteca Angelica, Boccaccio, Boethius, Bolognese, Bosone da Gubbio, Campaldino, canticle, Canto, Christian, Cicero, Dante Alighieri, destiny, dialect, Europe, exile, facsimile, Florence, gold, Guelphs, hand-treated paper, hell, Holy Trinity, Italian, Jacopo Alighieri, Latin, littera textualis, manuscript, medieval, miniature, paradise, Petrarch, philosopher, poem, poet, purgatory, scribe, soldier, song, tanned leather, tercets, terza rima, The Divine Comedy, Thomas Aquinas, tripartite stanza, Tuscan, vernacular, Virgil

PQ4301-A1-2016-Devil

“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

La Divina Commedia Angelica
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Castel Guelfo di Bologna, Italy: Imago la Nobilita del Facsimile, 2016
PQ4301 A1 2016

Facsimile. MS1102 from the Biblioteca Angelica, this late fourteenth century Bolognese codex contains The Divine Comedy, commentary by Jacopo Alighieri and Bosone da Gubbio, and a fragment of a poem written by Alexander the Great Gualterus de Castellione. Each of the Cantos are introduced with a miniature depicting the contents of the song. Thirty-four other miniatures depict scenes from hell in bright colors on a gold background. The manuscript is incomplete. Empty spaces were left for miniatures for the songs of “Paradiso” and “Purgatorio.” It is likely that only one scribe is responsible for the text. The script hand is littera textualis. The facsimile has hand applied gold leaf before each canticle on hand-treated paper. The binding is hand stitched in a naturally tanned leather.

Dante Alighieri, born in Florence, to a notable family but of modest means, was an Italian poet and philosopher. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), a medieval Christian allegory of man’s temporal and eternal destiny. The poet draws on his own experience of exile from his native city, in which he encounters hell, purgatory, and paradise. Along the way, the poet offers analysis of contemporary problems and spiritual wisdom through inventive linguistic imagery. Dante wrote his epic poem in the vivid Italian vernacular, rather than Latin, using primarily a Tuscan dialect which became the literary language in western Europe for centuries. Dante’s use of the vernacular opened his work to an audience broader than the academy.

Dante was classically trained and drew on the works of Virgil, Cicero, Boethius and others for his philosophical thinking. He was also well aware of more contemporary writers such as Thomas Aquinas. A soldier, he fought in the ranks at the battle of Campaldino in 1289 on the side of the Guelphs — a battle instrumental in the reformation of the Florentine constitution.

Dante is credited with inventing terza rima, composed of tercets woven into a linked rhyme scheme. He ended each canto of the The Divine Comedy with a single line that completes the rhyme scheme with the end-word of the second line of the preceding tercet. The tripartite stanza is symbolic with the Holy Trinity. Later Italian poets, including Boccaccio and Petrarch, followed this form.

Facsimile edition of 423 copies, 25 hors de commerce. University of Utah copy is no. 18.

PQ4301-A1-2016-Lion

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Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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animals, color, color theory, Empedocles, Florence, Florentinae, Isaac Newton, Laurentii Torrentini, Loeb Classical Library, medicine, Neapolitan, philosopher, Piza, plants, Pseudo Aristotle, scientist, Simone Porzio (1497-1554), soul, vellum

qc495-a7-1548-title

“Those colours are simple which belong to the elements, fire, air, water and earth. For air and water are naturally white in themselves, while fire and the sun are golden. The earth is also naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed. This becomes clear when we consider ashes; for they become white when the moisture which caused their dyeing is burned out of them; but not completely so, for they are also dyed by smoke, which is black. In the same way sand becomes golden, because the fiery red and black tints the water. The colour black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature. But the other colours are evidently due to mixture, when they are blended with each other. For darkness follows when light fails. — Loeb Classical Library translation

DE COLORIBUS LIBELLVS A SIMONE PORTIO…
Pseudo Aristotele (384 BC – 322 BC)
Florentinae: ex officina Laurentii Torrentini, 1548
Editio princips

This is perhaps the earliest work on color theory, attributed to Aristotle, who took his ideas from Empedocles and went a step further, creating a base line occupied by seven colors. Aristotle’s base line was applied to all color-systems up to the time of Isaac Newton. His assumption was to represent colors as actual characteristics of the surface of bodies and not as subjective phenomena produced by the eye or in the brain as a result of the properties of light. Aristotle observed colors very accurately, as well as their contrasts. He noted, for instance, that the violet appearing on white wool appeared different when on black wool and that colors appeared different in daylight than in candlelight. Only much later were these phenomena systematically examined and explained.

This edition was translated and edited with extensive scholarly commentary by Simone Porzio (1497-1554), a Neapolitan philosopher and scientist who was a fanatical disciple of Pomponazzi. Porzio eventually gave up lecturing on medicine at Piza and his scientific studies to focus on studying philosophy. Porzio denied immortality in all forms and taught that the human soul is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants.

Binding is old vellum with a red leather lettering piece.

qc495-a7-1548-pg23

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Book of the week — The Next Word: Red Square

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Alan Loney, Albion press, Arthur C. Danto, Australia, Barcham Green India Office, Bill Stewart, Dante, Dutch, Electio Editions, English, Groningen, Harvard University Press, Hendrik Werkman, Holland, letterpress, Lewis Allen, Malvern East, philosopher, printer, Ruscombe India Office, typography, University of Utah, Vamp & Tramp, wood type

PR9639.3-L6-N49-2012-(cover)

THE NEXT WORD: RED SQUARE
Alan Loney (b. 1940)
Malvern East VIC, Australia: Electio Editions, 2012
PR9639.3 L6 N49 2012

From the artist’s statement: “This book derives from putting two small obsessions together and seeing what happens. The first is with the typographical wonder of Hendrik Werkman (1882-1945), and his remarkable periodical ‘The Next Call,’ printed from 1923 to 1926. Each issue was 8 pages long, in approximately 40 copies, and designed and printed entirely from the materials of his print shop in Groningen, Holland…

My second obsession is the imaginary exhibition outlined by Arthur C Danto in his now famous book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press, 1981) where he poses the thorny set of intellectual problems around the question of the wording one attaches to paintings. Simply, Danto’s exhibition was a series of red rectangles, all looking the same, but all painted by different artists, and each with a different title. This apparently simple proposition created for Danto one of the knottiest philosophical speculations in contemporary criticism.

My book is designed to honor both these men, the material printer who said, ‘I produce designs during the course of printing,’ and the intellectual who wrote, “I am speaking as a philosopher, construing the gesture as a philosophical act.’ The pages for the ‘exhibition’ appear on the rectos only. The texts on the versos are constructed solely from all the Dutch words that in their spelling are also English words in Werkman’s texts through out the nine issues of ‘The Next Call.’”

Designed, printed, and bound by Alan Loney. Letterpress printed with Dante and wood types in red, blue, yellow, and gold on vintage Barcham Green India Office or Ruscombe India Office paper using a copy of Lewis Allen’s Albion press.* Bound with Ruscombe paper over boards. Issued in slipcase. Edition of forty-five copies, numbered, five copies hors de commerce. University of Utah copy is number 36, signed by the author.

*Thanks to Bill Stewart, Vamp & Tramp, for his knowledge, friendship and inspiration.

PR9639.3-L6-N49-2012-titlePR9639.3-L6-N49-2012-warspread

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