1652 · Venetia
Della Porta's influential work on physiognomy, originally published in 1586 as De humana physiognomonia. Here, the author seeks to categorize similarities between visible external physical characteristics and the traits of the soul or character hidden within — formalizing a pseudo-science that continues (in assorted variations) to find adherents even today. The human physiognomy treatise is followed by its celestial counterpart, and then, as issued, by the Fisonomia di Polemone (although attributed to Polemo, actually a Byzantine forgery) and the Fisonomia naturale of Giovanni Ingegneri.
The two Italian-laguage della Porta texts are illustrated with => numerous in-text copper engravings: These remarkable vignettes include, along with a sequence of individual animals and humans, a series of => side-by-side comparisons of human facial types to various types of animal, offered as examples of Porta's determinations: "The horse is a noble animal, therefore it is a sign of nobility to walk erect with the head held high. Men who resemble a donkey are like that animal: timid, stupid, nervous. He who looks like an ostrich is akin to it in character: he is timid, elegant, vicious, stolid. Man who reminds us of a swine is a swine, eating greedily and having all the other characteristics, such as rudeness, irascibility, lack of discipline, sordidness, lack of intelligence [and] modesty. In a similar way, men who look like ravens are impudent; those who resemble oxen are stubborn, lazy, irascible; men who have lips shaped like those of a lion are hearty, magnanimous, courageous; others who make us think of a ram are timid, malicious and humble" (Seligmann). Mortimer notes that these engravings "were probably copied from the Vicenza woodcuts used by Pietro Paolo Tozzi."
Evidence of Readership: Front pastedown and free endpaper with early inked annotation in Latin and French.
This ed. not in Brunet; see Mortimer, Italian 16th-Century Books, 398; Cicognara 2460. See also Seligmann, The History of Magic, 319. No edition of the Polemo forgery is listed in Freeman, Bibliotheca Fictiva. Contemporary mottled calf, covers framed in gilt double fillets, spine with gilt-stamped title, compartments ruled in gilt and holdaing gilt-stamped decorative motifs, and raised bands with gilt roll; leather expectably acid-pitted, binding moderately worn overall. Annotation as above. => This is a very pleasing copy, with pages clean and images printed darkly and crisply. (Inventory #: 39430)