DE RE RUSTICA

An early edition of the most significant surviving European agricultural compendium from antiquity. This volume features charming woodcut illustrations—originally published in the first Aldine edition of 1514—depicting farming tools, land surveying instruments, geometric diagrams, and vineyard layouts. The collected works of the Scriptores rei rusticae were first compiled in the editio princeps, edited by Georgius Merula and printed in Venice in 1472. The treatises by Cato, Varro, Columella, and Palladius cover topics such as viticulture, olive and fruit cultivation, animal husbandry, and agricultural labor. The collection also includes Renaissance humanist commentaries by Merula and Filippo Beroaldo, along with Aldus Manutius’s agricultural calendar.

Description:
Small octavo (15 x 10 cm.); pp. [xxxii], 814, [8]; printer’s device on title page, 16 woodcut illustrations, woodcut initials. Blindstamped pigskin over wooden boards. Waterstains at the beginning, ownership note on titlepage, two handwritten titles on spine, one on label.

Reference: VD16 L 1580. STC 187. Adams S 815 (Scriptores rei rusticae)