Beschreibung:

Borja, Juan de. Empresas Morales a la S.C.R.M. del Rey Don Phelipe nuestro señor Dirigidas, por Don Iuan de Boria de su Consejo y su Embaxador cercala M. Casarea del Emperador Rudolpho II. Prague: Georg Nigrin (Jirí Czerny), 1581
First edition of the first collection of emblems compiled and written by a Spanish author. Juan de Borja (1533–1606) was the third son of (Saint) Francisco de Borja, fourth Duke of Gandía (1510–1572), who would become in 1565 third Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Educated by the Jesuits, Juan began a distinguished diplomatic career in 1568 in the service of Felipe II and in 1576 was appointed ambassador in Prague, just as Rudolf II began his reign. The Empresas morales is his only known literary work. It was published in Prague just prior to his return to Spain and was the first book in this pictorial-literary genre printed in Bohemia. A second edition, issued by Borja's grandson, Francisco de Borja, at Brussels in 1680, added 124 suppositious emblems, which the editor claimed to have found among the author’s papers. A Latin translation by Ludovicus Camerarius appeared at Berlin in 1697 and a German translation by Georg Friedrich Scharff was published at Berlin in 1693.
The engraved title and one hundred engraved emblems were credited by Lubomír Konečný to Erasmus Hornick, an artist born in Antwerp in 1520, who worked in Augsburg and Nuremberg as a printmaker, designer, and goldsmith; on 1 September 1582 Hornick was appointed “Camer Goldschmidt” (royal goldsmith) by Rudolf II in Prague (Konečný, “La ilustración de las Empresas morales de Juan de Borja: Erasmo Hornick,” in Ars Longa: Cuadernos de Arte 3 [1992], pp. 9–12). Hornick is known by five series of etchings for jewellery, vases, and metal work, some bearing the monogram EH, and a quantity of unsigned drawings (no silver- or goldsmith work bearing Hornick’s mark survives). The monograms appearing on forty-one plates in the Empresas morales were subsequently studied with greater rigor by Silke Reiter, who interprets them (three types are identified) as the initials EI of an unknown printmaker. Reiter found no stylistic affinities with Horneck’s drawings (Reiter, Erasmus Hornick: ein Goldschmied, Radierer und Zeichner des 16. Jahrhunderts [Regensburg, 2012], pp. 72–77).
8vo (178 x 137 mm). Roman type. collation: A2 B–Z4 Aa–Cc4 Cc4: 106 leaves. Engraved architectonic title incorporating arms of Philip II and 100 engraved emblems (41 signed with various forms of a monogram EI, all colored by a contemporary hand with frames rubricated, each page within printed border of double red lines. (Title cropped and extended, some marginal tears affecting text, including B3 with internal chip affecting text, B4 torn and repaired, X4 with marginal tear and chipping, a few leaves remargined at bottom, quire O to end lightly browned.)
binding: Contemporary Spanish limp vellum (186 x 146 mm), traces of 2 pairs of leather ties, flat spine, 2 leather bands piercing covers at spine near head and tail, title in ink down spine “Empresas Morales,” plain edges. (Soiled, spine title rubbed, front free endpaper lost.)
provenance: Ink-stamp of an armorial shield surmounted by an eagle éployé, effaced by black ink (unidentified) — Internationaal Antiquariaat Menno Hertzberger, Amsterdam, 1965 — Arthur Vershbow (1922–2012) and Charlotte Vershbow (1924–2000) (joint exlibris; Christie’s, New York, 20 June 2013, lot 414 ($17,500). acquisition: Purchased at the Vershbow sale through Robin Halwas. 
references: IB 2168; USTC 342746; Palau 33112; Becker, Fact and Fantasy, Illustrated Books from a Private Collection (Cambridge, MA 1976), no. 41.