PORZIO Simone De Coloribus libellus, à Simone Portio Neapolitano litinitate donatus, & commentariis illustratus : unà cum eiusdem praefatione, qua Coloris naturam declarat.

Hoffman I, 289 (“rare and very important”); Kemp, The science of art, p. 264; Schwab, Bibliographie d’Aristotle 3503 ; Crans, Bibliogr. of Aristotle, 108.139; Wellcome I 5217; Hoffmann I 289; Bm.Stc. 54; Adams P 1958.

First edition of one of the earliest works on color theory.

Traditionally attributed to Aristotle, recent research point to Theophrastus as the author, the latter being a pupil of Aristotle. The translation from the Greek was given the Neapolitan medical doctor and philosopher Simone Porzio. 

Simone Porzio (1497-1554), « Italian philosopher, was born and died at Naples. Like his greater contemporary, Pomponazzi, he was a lecturer on medicine at Pisa (1546-1552), and in later life gave up purely scientific study for speculation on the nature of man. His philosophic theory was identical with that of Pomponazzi, whose De immortalitate animi he defended and amplified in a treatise De mente humana. There is told of him a story which illustrates the temper of the early humanistic revival in Italy. When he was beginning his first lecture at Pisa he opened the meteorological treatises of Aristotle. The audience, composed of students and townspeople, interrupted him with the cry Quid de anima? (We would hear about the soul), and Porzio was constrained to change the subject of his lecture. He professed the most open materialism, denied immortality in all forms and taught that the soul of man is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants, material in origin and incapable of separate existence. » Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911. Aristotle’s and his pupil’s work exerted a strong influence on Arabic philosophers such as Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenne and Averoes. ”As the author states at the end of the treatise, it is intended rather to supply data for a detailed examination into the scientific theory of colour than to expound a complete thesis. He has realized that the development of colour in animals and plants depends to some extent on heat, and he seems to suggest that heat and moisture are the controlling factors. It is of more value as a collection of observed facts than for any theory of the origin and development of colour in physical life” (Aristotle, Minor Works, Cambridge and London, Loeb Classical Library, 1936, p. 3). 

The book is illustrated with two initials and an ornamental engraving on the title by Granjon (Vervliet, 178).

Very good copy.

Provenance: Kristen Collection (rubber stamp on inner cover).