La Institutione de una Fanciulla Nata Nobilmente

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La Institutione de una Fanciulla Nata Nobilmente

Printer Plantin Press, Antwerp [First book printed by Christopher Plantin], Flemish

Author Giovanni Michele Bruto (Italian, about 1515-1594)

Binder LeGascon

Place of OriginBelgium, Antwerp

Date1555

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number

1927.136

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Label TextThis little volume is the first book issued by the Plantin Press, having been published in 1555. It is a bilingual edition, the Italian text being printed in Italic and the French translation in Roman type. There are now but eight recorded copies of this work in existence, three of them being on blue paper. Antwerp was a major trading center of the Spanish Netherlands, and it already claimed a number of good printers when Christopher Plantin arrived there in 1549. He began a bookbinding and bookselling business, and in 1555 he expanded to printing and publishing. The Plantin Press soon became the largest and most progressive publishing house in the late sixteenth-century Europe, thus making Antwerp the most important center for book production. Under the sign of the Golden Compasses, the Plantin workshop consisted of some 20 presses employing about 160 men, producing almost 2000 books in Plantin's lifetime. The books covered such topics as theology, law, science, botany and Herbals, the classics, dictionaries, atlases, music, emblem books, and numerous Bibles. Jan Moretus, Plantin''s manager and son-in-law, inherited the business on Plantin's death, and the Plantin-Moretus printing dynasty actively continued until the nineteenth century, when it was made into a museum, which still exists today. This little octavo volume is the first book printed by the Plantin Press. It is a bilingual edition: the Italian text is in italic type. It is one of three known copies printed on blue paper.Exhibition HistoryHanover, N.H. Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Baker Library. 1963