First edition, with part 5 in its most complete variant, of one of the most beautifully illustrated surveys of Roman antiquities. Jean-Jacques Boissard (1528-1602) was a French Neo-Latin poet and prominent antiquarian. He had an adventurous life, fleeing from the seminary where we was training, travelling throughout Germany, Italy and Greece and eventually embracing Protestantism. A passionate collector of antiquities despite his little financial means, he compiled a detailed account of his numerous visits to archaeological sites and private houses. The Romanae Urbis topographia was his most successful work, largely because of the refined plates engraved by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598 ), the renowned artist responsible, i. a., for a series of illustrations of early expeditions to the Americas and Asia. Bry s engraved self-portrait appears here at the beginning of the first four parts along with Boissard s. The extraordinary set of illustrations mainly pertains to the Roman antiquities which were scattered in every corner of the Eternal City at the end of the sixteenth century. The book, published in six parts between 1597 and 1602, also provides important evidence of contemporary art collecting in Rome, presenting pieces owned by Pope Julius III, Angelo Colocci and the cardinals Carpi, Farnese, Salviati and Cesi. In part 6, one can find antiquities from Egypt and Greece, while the magnificent engraved title in part 4, with a skeleton popping up out of a sarcophagus and showing an hourglass to a kneeling cardinal, is an effective memento mori. This marvellous copy comes from the library of James I (1566-1625), the first and probably the most learned King of Great Britain as ruler of both Scotland and England. He studied Greek, French, and Latin and made good use of a library of classical and religious writings that his tutors, George Buchanan and Peter Young, assembled for him. James s education aroused in him literary ambitions rarely found in princes but which also tended to make him a pedant. EBO. His numerous books were often customised with his arms by the royal binder, John Bateman, who employed various style, material and techniques (M. Foot, The Henry Davids Gift, I, pp. 38-49, 52). These two volumes, however, appears to be exceptional even within Bateman s refined and wide-ranging output.
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