Ochsenbrunner, Thomas (fl. ca. 1494). Priscorum heroum stemmata. Rome, Johann Besicken and Sigismundus Mayr, 18 February 1494. (Copy)
Ochsenbrunner, Thomas (fl. ca. 1494). Priscorum heroum stemmata. Rome, Johann Besicken and Sigismundus Mayr, 18 February 1494. (Copy)
Ochsenbrunner, Thomas (fl. ca. 1494).
Priscorum heroum stemmata. Rome, Johann Besicken and Sigismundus Mayr, 18 February 1494.
I hardly remember to have seen
a more tastefully printed little volume...
– Thomas Frognall Dibdin –
Ochsenbrunner, Thomas (fl. ca. 1494).
Priscorum heroum stemmata. Rome, Johann Besicken and Sigismundus Mayr, 18 February 1494.
4° (209x136 mm). Collation: a8, b-c6, d8. [28] leaves. Complete with fol. d8 blank; fol. a1r blank. Text in two columns, 27 lines. Type: 111R. On fol. a1v, two-sided woodcut ornamental border (from three blocks) and seven-line woodcut initial displaying the arms of the dedicatee, Cardinal Paolo Fregoso, the top panel containing a pair of compasses with the motto ‘PER NON FALLIR’ flanked by two wolves, emblems likewise referring to the Fregoso Family (for identical emblems see the sumptuous Biblical manuscript produced for this family in the 1490s, now kept at the University of Glasgow Library, the accompanying commentary of which is preserved at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan). Four-sided ornamental woodcut border (from eight blocks) on fol. a2v. Full-page woodcut on fol. a4r within a frame formed by eighteen vignettes displaying different shields and devices, each bearing related captions: the central panel depicts Romulus asleep beneath an oak and its roots, with the inscription ‘QVERCVS. CAPITOLINA.’, on the back, various Roman monuments, all supplemented with captions in a scroll (at left, ‘CAPITOLIO’ and ‘MONS TARPEIVS’; at right, ‘TEMPLV. APOLLIS’, ‘TEMPLVM IOVIS.’, ‘MONS PALATINVS’); in the lower panel, a shield with the caption ‘ANCILAE’ flanked by two blocks, each bearing the letters ‘I.H.I.S.’ or ‘I.M.I.S’. Seventy-five woodcut vignettes in text: four larger vignettes measuring 60x47 mm at the beginning of books II-V showing Junius Brutus, Appius Claudius, Julius Caesar and Constantine; the other seventy-one small oblong vignettes of various Romans [repeats of thirteen different blocks]. Woodcut decorated initial on fol. a2v and fol. 44v, the latter on black ground. Nineteenth-century Parisian green crushed morocco signed by Trautz- Bauzonnet. Spine with six small raised bands; title and imprint in gilt lettering. Board edges gilt ruled, inside dentelles. Marbled pastedowns and flyleaves, pale red silk bookmark. A very good copy. On the blank recto of the first leaf, an early, possibly contemporary hand has annotated a list of four titles of books: ‘Arbor Capitolina. Sextus Rufus. Marsilij opuscula quaedam. Luciani quaedam traducti’. As the first title annotated in this list is Ochsenbrunner’s Priscorum heroum stemmata, it may correspond to an index of editions once bound in a miscellany, likely all printed in the fifteenth century.
First edition of one of the few illustrated books of fifteenth-century Rome, a work that greatly influenced the Renaissance discovery of classical antiquity.
Thomas Ochsenbrunner, a Dominican friar from Basel, provides a compendium of the Roman history, from its legendary founder Romulus down to the time of emperor Theodosius (379–392). As the author states in his prefatory letter to Cardinal and Doge of Genoa Paolo Fregoso or Campofregoso (1427-1498), the survey is based on classical sources, and was primarily intended – like the widespread Mirabilia urbis Romae – for pilgrims and visitors, offering its audience a Christian reading of the history of the Eternal City.
The Priscorum heroum stemmata was printed by Johann Besicken, who had moved from Basel to Rome around 1485, in collaboration with another German printer active in the city, Sygismund Mayr. This partnership produced only four books, printed between 1493 and 1494, including an edition of the Mirabilia that appeared on 20 March 1494, a month after Ochsenbrunner’s work. Mayr moved to Naples, while Besicken began collaborating with other printers then active in Rome, such as Andreas Freitag and Martinus de Amsterdam. After ca. 1501 Besicken worked alone, and he carried on his activity in this capacity until at least 1512.
The illustrations of the Priscorum heroum stemmata are of the greatest importance, especially the full-page woodcut depicting, at the centre, Romulus and the Quercus Capitolina, i.e. the great Oak Tree of the Capitol growing from his body. The iconograghy is that of the biblical Tree of Jesse – the father of King David – a well-established representation of lineage used for showing Christ’s ancestors, widespread in late medieval monastic communities and particularly in the Dominican Order, as attested by a famous woodcut included in the Meditationes by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, printed in Rome in 1467. In the Priscorum heroum stemmata, the standardized spiritual genealogy is re-interpreted for celebrating the glory of ancient Rome. Romulus is presented asleep, bearing the hasta Martis on a bed formed of various shields, while the Capitoline Hill and its temples are visible in the background; the head visible at right recalls the legendary discovery of a human skull (caput) in the hill, a tale also preserved in Livius’ Decades. The central image is framed within a border formed by the shields of people from conquered regions and devices symbolising Rome and its military power, such as the Capitoline she-wolf nourishing the twins Romulus and Remus,
Jupiter’s thunderbolt, and the shield known as ‘ancilia’ (mispelled as ‘ancilae’ in the caption).
The ‘arboreal’ character of this composition continues through the following seventy-five vignettes illustrating the text. The series of subsequent kings, emperors and other protagonists of Roman history are represented as fruits of the oak grown from Romulus, and therefore depicted as half-body figures sprouted from foliate calyxes, surrounded by branches and acorns.
The style of this illustrative apparatus reveals the hand of a still unknown artist from the German area. The key is hidden in the rather enigmatic letters inscribed in the lower panel of the full-page woodcut depicting Romulus and the Quercus Capitolina, which can be read as either ‘I.H.I.S.’ or I.M.I.S’, the correct interpretation being still debated. The attribution to Jakob von Strassburg, advanced by Nagler and now generally adopted, is not entirely convincing, mainly for stylistic reasons. The two blocks bearing these letters were re-used – along with that depicting the ancilia shield – in various editions of the Mirabilia printed by Besicken, while the border on fol. a2v also appears in the celebrated Secondo cantar de l’India by Giuliano Dati (cf. Sander 2360) dating to 1494/95, the printing of which is variously attributed to Besicken or to Andreas Freitag.
Appended to the work is a short epigram by ‘Andreas Praenestinus’, who can confidently be identified with the antiquarian from Preneste Andrea Fulvio (ca. 1470-1527), a disciple of Pomponio Leto (1428- 1498), who may be responsible for the elaborate iconographic program of the Priscorum heroum stemmata. Fulvio is also the author of the epigram on the title-page of the Opusculum de mirabilibus nouae & ueteris urbis Romae by Francesco Albertini, issued in Rome in 1510.
ISTC io00007000; GW M27428; HC 11934*; BMC IV 139; IGI 6945; Goff O-7; Rossetti 754; Sander 5022; Lippmann, Wood Engraving in Italy, p. 13; Nagler, Monogrammisten, iii, p. 425; R. Weiss, “Andrea Fulvio antiquario romano (c. 1470-1527)”, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia, s. ii, 28 (1959), pp. 1-44; P. Veneziani, “Besicken e il metodo degli incunabolisti”, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 2005, pp. 77-99; M. Davies, “Besicken and Guillery”, in The Italian book 1465-1800, Studies presented to Dennis E. Rhodes on his 70th birthday, edited by D. V. Reidy, London, 1993, 35-54.
