Advanced Search
Advanced Search

Requires Photography

Hieroglyphica


Horou Apollonos Neiloou Hieroglyphika = Ori Apollinis Niliaci, De sacris notis & sculpturis libri duo
Author: Horapollo (Egyptian)
Attributed to: Jean Cousin (French, about 1490–about 1560)
Attributed to: Jean Goujon (French, about 1510–about 1565)
Printer: Guillaume Morel (French, 1505–1564)
Publisher: Jacques Kerver (French, active 1535–1583)
1551
Place of Publication: Paris, France

Medium/Technique Illustrated book with 195 woodcuts
Dimensions Overall: 17.3 x 11.2 x 2 cm (6 13/16 x 4 7/16 x 13/16 in.)
Credit Line Fund in memory of Horatio Greenough Curtis
Accession Number33.525
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsIllustrated books
Paris: Guillaume Morel, for Jacques Kerver, 1551

Catalogue Raisonné Murray, French, 282 (1543 ed.); Mortimer, French, 315; Praz, p. 82
Description(Paris: Guillaume Morel, for Jacques Kerver, 1551) Octavo; 132 leaves; nineteenth-century gilt-stamped tan calf.

Emblematic illustrations featuring esoteric imagery (such as cuts on pp. 45, 93, 106, 149, and 222-23 [floating eyes and heads]).

The original text was written by Horapollo, an Egyptian scribe, who in the beginning of the 5th century sought to preserve the interpretations of symbols on his country's monuments. The text was printed originally in Greek, presumably translated from the Egyptian, in an Aldine edition of Aesop, 1505.

This is the second Kerver edition (the first was 1543), and the first in Latin and Greek. The woodcuts are traditionally attributed to either Cousin or Goujon; they are seen as by the same designer as those in the 1546 Kerver Hypnerotomachia. In this edition, seven of the original woodcuts have been replaced with new blocks slightly or entirely redesigned (Mortimer). The block on leaf F8r is printed upside down, and the cut on leaf G7v is pasted in place, over a blank space.
ProvenanceE.P. Goldschmidt & Co., London, from whom purchased by MFA, June 1, 1933.