Beschreibung:

De humani corporis fabrica. Venice: Franciscus Francisci and Johannes Criegher, 1568. 2 parts in one volume. Small folio (312 x 220 mm). Large woodcut device on title, numerous woodcut anatomical illustrations, woodcut initials and head-pieces, leaf 2d5 (p321) contains figures to be cut out and superimposed on the illustration on 2d3 is left intact in this copy. Contemporary deerskin over paste-boards, upper spine end expertly repaired, some rubbing. Some minor marginal worming, blank corner of V6 and X1 torn away, a few short marginal tears, some light marginal staining. Provenance: early marginalia in a few places; Francois Petit (1681-1766), physician of the Duke of Orleans and a member of the Academy of Sciences (armorial bookplate "Ex Libris Francisci Petit Doct. Med. Suessionaei"). Third illustrated edition of Vesalius and the 4th edition of the text. "In 1564, the year of his death, Vesalius stopped in Venice on his way to the Holy Land and submitted his last book, a reply to Fallopius, to the printer Francesco Senense for publication. This same printer, four years later, in collaboration with a Pomeranian engraver, Johannes Criegher, whose name he generously coupled with his own as printer, ventured to print a complete text of the 1555 Fabrica in a smaller format and with all of the wood-blocks recut in smaller size....The new woodcuts for the illustrations, however, were so well executed that the engraver might almost have passed for the same person who in Venice at the behest of Vesalius had cut the original blocks for the larger work. It must have been not only an expensive undertaking but a venturesome one" (Cushing). The collaboration with Johannes Criegher is mentioned by Franceschi in his dedication to Antonio Montecatini. Adams V-606; Cushing VI.A-4; Harvard Italian 529; Osler 569.