[Opera]. by GIOVIO, Paolo (1483-1552).

First Collected Edition. Three parts in one volume, 8vo (146 x 100 mm), pp. [xvi], 310, [x]; [xvi], 237, [i]; 180, [vi], separate title-page to each part, woodcut initials, intermittent traces of light dampstaining to upper and outer blank margins, slightly heavier to a handful of leaves, in a contemporary South German pigskin binding over bevelled wooden boards, stamped to a double blind ruled panel design, outer border with blind-stamped crucifixion, snake wrapped around the cross and St Peter, lozenge-shaped ornaments on the central panels, bordered with blind stamps of rosettes and stars, two brass clasps (one wanting hook), raised bands, titles inked to spine and upper margin of upper board, extremities a little rubbed, traces of old bookplate on front pastedown, a few near contemporary marginalia to the third work.

A scarce edition, in three parts, of five major works by the Italian physician, historian and biographer Paolo Giovio, including his account of Muscovy and his history of Britain.
The first part features the ‘Elogia doctorum virorum’ of 1546 - an encyclopaedia of early humanism celebrating with short biographies important scholars of the time including Trapetiuntius, Regiomontanus, Thomas Linacre, Copernicus, Machiavelli and Zwingli. The second includes his ‘Descriptiones Britanniae, Scotiae, Hyberniae & Orchadum’ of 1548, devoted to the history and ethnography of the British Isles, followed by ‘elogia’ of important British figures including Thomas More, chronological annals of the kingdom and a genealogical diagram of the kings of England. The third part begins with his influential account of Muscovy first published in 1525: a fundamental source for the knowledge of Russia in 16th-century Europe, with sections on its history, customs, religion and language. His first and less famous ‘De Romanis Piscibus libellus’ of 1524 is also included, an account of all the kinds of fish which could be caught in the River Tiber, as well as ‘Descriptio Larii Lacus’, a topographical account of Lake Como, near which Giovio lived.
In a fine contemporary binding, probably from southern Germany: the blind stamps of the Crucifixion, with the snake wrapped around the Cross and St Peter is typical of sixteenth century bindings from Bavaria and Saxony.

Graesse III, 490 only mentions the 1578 Basel edition; not in Brunet.

OCLC locates Yale only.