Le XII pietre pretiose, [...] aggiuntevi il diamante, le margarite, e l'oro [...] Discorso dell'alicorno, et delle sue singolarissime virtù [...]

TWO ALCHEMICAL WORKS BOUND TOGETHER
(bound with:)
QUATTRAMI, Evangelista (1527-1602). La vera dichiaratione di tutte le metafore, similitudini e enimmi degl'antichi filosofi alchimisti […] Rome, Vincenzo Accolti, 1587.
Two works in one volume, 4to (220x157 mm). I: [8], 130, [10] pp. Collation: [†]4 A-Q4 R6. On the title page engraved emblem of the dedicatee Cardinal Peretti Montalto, woodcut printer's device on the last page, ornamental woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces. II: [24], 230, [24 of 26] pp. Collation: †-†††4 A-Hh4 Ii4. Lacking leaf Ii4, a blank. On the title page woodcut emblem of the dedicatee Cardinal d'Este, woodcut printer's device on the last page, woodcut decorative initials, head- and tail-pieces. Contemporary flexible vellum with overlapping edges, ink title along the spine, light blue edges (traces of ties, slightly soiled). Light marginal staining at the beginning and at the end of the volume, small paper loss to the bottom blank margin of l. S1 of the second work and small round hole on l. Gg4 of the second work not affecting the text, all in all a genuine and fresh copy.
I. First edition of this treatise on mineralogy and gemmology containing the Historia della gran Bestia, identified with the moose or buffalo, where Bacci discusses the occult properties of its horn against the “falling sickness” or epilepsy. It also contains the Discorso sull'Alicorno (first printed in 1573), a zoological work entirely dedicated to the unicorn and its occult and manifest properties. The work is therefore of interest both for gemmological studies and for magical and alchemical literature.
Bacci Andrea was born in 1524 in Sant'Elpidio a Mare, Piceno. He studied letters with Giovanni Paolo Perriberti and medicine and philosophy under Modestino Casini. For a few years he practised medicine in Serrasanquirico, then went to Rome, where thanks to the protection of Ascanio Colonna he obtained the chair of botany at the Sapienza University in 1567. In 1587 he was appointed archiatrist to Sixtus V. He died in Rome in 1600.
Bacci never loved the practice of medicine but proved to be a very brilliant scholar and distinguished himself as the author of works on natural history, hydrology, pharmacology, zoology, oenology, which testify to a medical-biological preparation that was remarkable for those times (cf. M. Crespi, Bacci, Andrea, in: “Dizionario biografico degli Italiani”, 1963, V, pp. 29-30).
Bibliotheca magica. Dalle opere a stampa della Biblioteca Casanatense di Roma, no. 162; Thorndike, V, pp. 484-485 and VI, pp. 315-316; Index Aureliensis, 111.348; Edit 16, CNCE3831.
II. Original edition of this alchemical work, strongly polemical against contemporary works dealing with the same subject, and therefore against what the author calls “fraudulent philosophers”. Quattrami wants to reveal the deceptions presented by false alchemists. The work discusses heat, movement, the generation of metals and subterranean stones, smells, tastes and colours, the creation of gold (and its practical applications).
“La parution de La vera dichiaratione... est annoncée par Evangelista Quattrami dans son traité sur la préservation et le traitement de la peste de 1586. Un autre ouvrage sur la thériaque paru en 1597 parachève le tableau de son activité littéraire et scientifique. Dans La vera dichiaratione..., à côté des textes classiques d'Aristote, en particulier les Météorologiques, la Physique et le De la génération et de la corruption, Quattrami cite aussi les commentateurs du Stagirite, notamment Alexandre d'Aphrodise, Jean Philophon (‘Giovanni Grammatico'), Stéphane d'Alexandrie, Averroès, Avicenne, mais aussi d'autres auteurs comme Platon, Théophraste, Dioscoride, Pline, saint Augustin, Macrobe, les deux auctoritates médicales Galien et Hippocrate, et bien sûr des textes et des auteurs strictement alchimiques comme Hermès et son commentateur Hortulanus, Alphidius, Morien, Geber, Arnaud de Villeneuve, Raymond Lulle, le Lilium, la Turbo P