Della Porta (Giovanni Battista) & Stelluti (Francesco)

Della fisonomia di tutto il corpo humano…libri quattro, FIRST EDITION, title within large woodcut border depicting numerous examples of human and animal physiognomies by Daniel Widman; woodcut decorations, title soiled, light browning, contemporary limp vellum, a little soiled, later endpaper, 4to, Rome, n.p., [Vitale Mascardi], 1637.

*** First edition of Stelluti's synoptic tables, written to accompany Della Porta's ‘De humana physiognomia’, the most important physiognomy text of the period. First published in Latin in 1586; the Santo Uffizio forbade the publication of the Italian edition, which was printed in 1598 in Naples under a pseudonym. Francesco Stelluti, a polymath from Fabriano, was among the founders of the Accademia dei Lincei, established in 1603 by Stelluti, Federico Cesi, Anastasio de Filiis and Johannes van Heeck.