Tremillius (1 results)

Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. ~FULL TITLE OF PSALMS: The Whole Book of Psalms: Collected into English Meeter, by Thomas Sternhold, John Hopkins, W. Wittingham, and others, Conferred with the Hebrew ~Original black panelled smooth morocco, gilt decor to spine and boards. Gilt decor to board edges and turn-ins. All edges gilt. 12mo (9.7 x 16.3cm). Marbled endpapers. Lacks 3 blanks at front to coincide with 3 blanks at rear. Pencil inscription to verso front free endpaper: 'Flaxman / No 27 Wardour Street'. This is almost certainly the Neoclassical sculptor and illustrator John Flaxman (1755-1826), who took lodgings at 27 Wardour Street after his marriage in 1781 and lived there until he left for Rome in 1787; his close friend William Blake lived nearby until 1782. Flaxman, 'one of the first great European masters to devote his talents to industry', designed for Wedgwood, was internationally renowned as a monumental sculptor ('arguably the most widely celebrated British sculptor before Henry Moore'), and became a 'strikingly original' illustrator (ODNB). The son of a minor sculptor, Flaxman reputedly taught himself Latin as a precocious child and is not an unlikely owner for this volume; despite his own remarkable illustrations to Homer and Aeschylus, he told a visiting admirer shortly before his death that 'I maintain that there are more suitable artistic subjects to be found in the Old and New testaments than in pagan mythology' (Bindman, ed., 1979, John Flaxman R. A., 31). All pages framed in red, with particularly comprehensive red frames to Psalms. Red / black pictorial t.p. to Bible (with small loss to top margin); red / black t.p. to Psalms. Small loss to top Bible t.p., very slightly affecting image. Tailpieces to Psalms. Psalms have 8pp hymns (Veni Creator, The humble Suit of a Sinner, etc.) before Psalms proper. Psalms has imprint only 'Printed, Anno 1664'; signatures and pagination are discontinuous with the Bible. Signatures (2z6, 3a3, 3b12-3e12, 3f2) suggest it is from the end of a longer volume, perhaps a BCP. No obvious candidate has been identified, but the squirrel tailpiece used twice in the Psalms appears identical to that used by the Rotterdam-based printer Henry Goddaeus (c. 1633-1684), 'a commercial printer with no strong religious convictions, publishing for a Baptist, a Quaker, two Scottish Covenanters, several Dutch pietist ministers, and a Jesuit, among others' (Somerset, 2020, 'Scottish covenanting, Jesuit, and Quaker printing in Holland, 1664-1684', Scottish Reformation Society Historical Journal, 10, 84; see 86 for ornament). If the Psalms are indeed a Rotterdam publication, this may help explain why they came to be bound up with Schipper's 1669 Amsterdam printing of the Junius-Tremellius-Beza Bible translation. This translation first appeared separately between 1569 (Beza's New Testament) and 1575-79 (the Old Testament of Junius and Tremellius), then was revised and published as a single edition in 1590. It was the favoured Latin Bible of the King James translators, as well as Donne and Milton, and as such had a profound influence on subsequent Englishings of the Bible as well as on Reformation theology more broadly. Bible is USTC 1806050. Original binding and intriguing provenance. ~Robust packaging. All UK orders with tracking, overseas orders on request. Used books are exempt from USA tariffs. Size: 959, (1), (x), 89, (9)pp.