VALVERDE, Juan De (attivo 1560) - Anatomia del corpo umano. Rome: Antonio Salamanca e Antonio Lafrer [ma Venezia: ...

VALVERDE, Juan De (attivo 1560) - Anatomia del corpo umano. Rome: Antonio Salamanca e Antonio Lafrer [ma Venezia: Nicolo Bevilacqua], 1560. First edition of the Italian translation. Second issue with the title-page changed to 1560 (the first issue has the title-page date 1559). Basically, Valverde's forty-two plates are reduced, engraved copies of the originals in Vesalius; of these, fifteen are paraphrases, cannibalizations, or new inventions. The designs were drawn by Gaspar Becerra (1520?-68?) and engraved by Nicolas Beatrizet (c. 1507?-70?), a French artisan working in Michelangelo's circle in Rome as Nicola Beatricetto. Valverde was keen to issue an Italian translation of his work to prove to a wider audience that the text was his own and not merely a version of that of Vesalius: his justification for using copies (engraved, reduced and reversed versions) of Vesalius' woodcuts was that they enabled him to more clearly demonstrate the differences in their two theories. Folio (300 x 210mm). Engraved title and 42 full-page engraved illustrations attributed to Gaspar Becerra and engraved by Nicolas Beatrizet, some small marginal woodcuts (small wormtrack in margin of final leaf, occasional light soiling and a few scattered stains, X1 with small repair at top inner margin). Later quarter vellum over boards, manuscript title on spine, red speckled edges. Provenance: few early annotations.