October 10, 2011
THE FIRST STUDY OF EUROPEAN CABINETS OF CURIOSITIES
EXTREMELY RARE: ‘the single most valuable contribution to Wunderkammer studies’
PRINTED 1716: WITH 30 PLATES
EAST INDIAN BOTANY, UNICORNS & SERPENTS, FOSSILS & COINS
The Book:
Michael Bernhard VALENTINI; Joannes Conradus Becker. Historia simplicium reformata, sub Musei Muscorum . Francofurti ad Moenum : Ex Officina Zunneriana, apud Johannem Adamum Jungium, 1716. COMPLETE. [26], 664, [16] p., illustrated with 30 leaves of plates (5 folded) : ill. ; FOLIO, A TALL COPY. 365 x 220 mm. Contemporary English paneled Calf and Gilt with slight bumping to head and foot, and wear to head, some toning, but overall a handsome complete copy. First Edition in Latin. Nissen BBI 2036; Pritzel 328. [SOLD]
Michael Bernhard Valentini (1657 – 1729) was a German doctor and a collector. He had an important Cabinet of curiosities and was the author of Museorum Museum, the first study of collections in Europe. The work for sale here is the first Latin translation by Johann Conrad Becker and edited by Christoph Vern. Valentini (the author’s son) under the title Historia simplicium reformata. It covers plants, animals, minerals and metals and their commercial and medical uses, rocks and minerals, fossils, East Indian and tropical plants, shells, unicorns and monstrosities, coffee, tobacco, tea, cacaa, vanilla, serpents, and even coins.
The Museum Museorum’ is ‘the single most valuable contribution to Wunderkammer studies’. It records and reprints many European collection that are otherwise unobtainable now through any other source. It also contains one of the earliest and most important treatises devoted to cinnamon: Johann Georg Dexbach’ Disput. medica inaug. de Casia Cinnamomea et Malabathro.
