SIONITA (trad.?)] [Antonius Evangelium Sanctum Domini nostri Jesu Christi.

Darlow-Moule, 1637 & 1643 ; Mortimer, Italian, 64 (note).

First edition, third issue, with the first quire dated July 1774.

This first printing of the Gospels in an Arabic-Latin interlinear version, which came out at the same time as the first printing of the Gospels in Arabic, were the first works to come out of Ferdinando de Medici’s press, the ‘Typographia Medicea’, founded by Pope Gregory XIII for the evangelisation of the East (copies are dated 1590 and 1591). The Arabic text was printed in Robert Granjon’s font under the supervision of the orientalist G. B. Raimondi.

It constitutes the first complete Western appearance of the four canonical Gospels in Arabic.

The work begins on page 9, without a title page or any preliminary text: the planned preliminary text was apparently never published, and the first eight pages were only supplied for the 1619 resale, changed for the new Florence sale in July 1774.

This edition is illustrated with a magnificent series of 150 woodcut illustrations (not 149 as Mortimer indicates) which constitute a remarkable virtual complement to the text. 

Although most of the blocks are unsigned, a number bear the monograms of the Italian painter, draughtsman and engraver Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630) as artist, and Leonardo Parasole (c.1570-c.1630) as engraver. The woodcuts are outstanding examples of Tempesta’s work, distinguished by the clarity of their composition and the didactic narration of the episodes depicted.

“Parasole, the cutter of these 1590 blocks, developed for the Typographia a method of printing books of plain chant. The illustrations for the Gospels in Arabic, intended as an aid to instruction, may have been a hindrance to missionary work among the Mohammedans, who by the Koran were forbidden the contemplation of images… An edition of the Arabic text with interlinear Latin was printed at the same time, and it is the Arabic-Latin edition that was reissued in 1619 and 1774. The size of the Arabic edition cited by Aspland as four thousand copies, of the Arabic-Latin three thousand” (Mortimer).

Light occasional waterstain, some occasional toning. Entirely untrimmed copy with deckel edges throughout.