Lot 10: BRANT, SEBASTIAN (1458-1521).

STULTIFERA NAVIS [TRANSLATED BY JACOBUS LOCHER, WITH PROLOGUES BY HIM AND TWO EPIGRAMS BY T. BECCADELLI]. BASEL: JOHANN BERGMANN DE OLPE, 1 AUGUST 1497

4to (211 x 147mm.), 156 leaves (of 160), 30 lines, Roman letter with headings in Gothic, printed marginalia, woodcut illustrations, nineteenth-century mottled calf gilt, spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, red morocco lettering-piece, lacking final quire, a1 damaged and repaired with slight loss, some leaves browned (from another copy?), c3 chipped with loss, extremities slightly rubbed

PROVENANCE

J.W. Pease, bookplate; Howard Pease, bookplate

LITERATURE

HC 3750; GW 5061; Bodleian XVc. B-512; Goff B1090; see C. Schmidt, Histoire littéraire de l'Alsace (Paris, 1879; reprint 1966) i, pp. 189-333 and ii, p. 343

NOTE

Brant's Ship of Fools was first published in 1494 by the same printer, and went through a number of editions. The author, a well-known Latinist and professor of law at Basel, became town clerk of Strassburg. In this satire, illustrated with woodcuts, he created a genre which was widely translated and imitated. The translation was by Locher, called Philomusus because of his love of poetry, who taught at the university in Fribourg.