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.

Édition originale d’un des tout premiers ouvrages sur la théorie de la couleur. 

Traditionnellement attribué à Aristote, des recherches récentes attribuent cet ouvrage aujourd’hui à Théophraste, l’un des disciples d’Aristote. Il fut traduit du grec en latin par le médecin et philosophe napolitain 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). 

Les ouvrages d’Aristote et de ses élèves furent traduites en arabe et exercèrent une forte influence sur d’importants philosophes du monde arabe tel que Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Avicenne et 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). L’illustration comprend deux initiales, et un fer ornemental sur le titre par Granjon (Vervliet, 178). 

Très bon exemplaire. 

Provenance: Kristen Collection (cachet humide au contre plat).