Beschreibung:

[PETER I, Tsar]. Simboly i emblemata ukazom i blagopovedenii imperatora Petra Alekseevicha [Symbola et emblemata jussu atque auspiciis Petri Alexeidis]. Amsterdam: Henricus Wetstein, 1705. First edition of the earliest Russian emblem book, commissioned by tsar Peter I, the first pervasively influential Russian book of non-religious content, and only the second book printed in Amsterdam with Russian type, after Aesop’s Fables of 1700. Rare: a single copy is recorded to have been sold at auction (our rooms, 2012). The 840 emblems, from the works of Cats, Hensius and Vaenius, include mottos in Russian and Dutch, and proverbs in various languages including English, Latin and French. The book was meant to capture and codify the existing canon of Russian emblematic iconography, as well as stimulate a recourse to fresh imagery. It is not known how many copies were printed by Wetstein. In Russia the book sold, as intended, mainly to craftsmen for use in the decoration of their artifacts, some of which survive to this day with citations that can only be from the Amsterdam edition. A Russian version was published in 1788. Landwehr, Emblem and Fable Books , 786. 4to (200 x 155mm). Additional engraved title in Russian by and after J. Mulder incorporating a portrait of Peter I after Godfrey Kneller 140 full-page illustrations with six emblems per page (very occasional light spotting.) Contemporary calf, spine tooled in compartments (joints cracked but holding firm, extremities worn, a few surface abrasions to sides). Provenance : Jacques Jespers of Aalst (18th-c. inscription on title) - Van Lesbeke, 1790 (inscription to front paste-down) – late-18th-c. inscription referencing Possevinus’s Bibliotheca selecta - later removed bookplate.