Pietro Mattioli, 1634, Crabs, Hermit Crabs & Scorpions
€395.00
Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577), Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis (French edition, A. Carbout, Venice, 1634) Hand-illustrated woodcuts on laid paper, folio.
This leaf is from the rare 1634 French edition of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Commentarii on Dioscorides, printed in Venice by A. Carbout. Although Mattioli originally composed his commentary in Italian and later issued Latin editions, his work was translated into French—likely in the mid-16th century in Lyon—to reach a broader audience of physicians and apothecaries. The 1634 reprint preserves that French text, but the identity of the translator remains unknown in surviving records. Because the French edition is less documented and less widely held than the Latin or Italian versions, complete recto–verso leaves from this issue are especially scarce and treasured by collectors.
Recto (p. 199) — Maia & Pagure
Illustration: Two finely detailed woodcuts of crab species:
Maia: depicted with its long spiny legs and broad carapace (likely referencing the spider crab).
Pagure: a squat, heavy-clawed crab (hermit crab forms were often confused with true crabs in Renaissance zoology).
Text: “Sur le II. livre de Diosc.” — describes their names in Greek (Maia, Granceuole), Latin (Pagurus, Granciporri), and vernacular (notre vulgaire Granciporri, Italian Granciporro). Mattioli follows Dioscorides in noting medical uses of burnt crab ashes for dog bites and skin afflictions.
Context: Early modern naturalists lumped together a wide array of crustaceans as “cancri.” This image reflects the Renaissance attempt to classify according to form and local names.
Scholarly significance: These crabs are of particular interest because they represent one of the earliest printed attempts to differentiate between coastal crabs (edible, medicinal) and hermit crabs, a subject much refined in later 17th–18th century zoology (Gesner, Aldrovandi, Rondelet).
Verso (p. 200) — Cancelles & Scorpions
Illustration:
Cancelles: paired engravings of hermit crabs emerging from spiral shells, their “borrowed house.”
Scorpions: lower page filled with multiple woodcut scorpions, naturalistically posed with raised tails.
Text: “Comment. de Matth.” — expands Dioscorides by noting how cancelli combine aspects of fish and shell animals. Early scholars marvelled at the “hybrid” nature of hermit crabs, with soft abdomens that required borrowed shells.
Medical context: Hermit crab ashes and scorpion oils were recommended in remedies against poison and epilepsy, reflecting the Galenic principle of “like cures like.”
Comparative scholarship: This spread is especially valuable because it juxtaposes marine crustaceans (crabs, hermit crabs) with land-dwelling scorpions, showing the porous boundaries between natural history, materia medica, and symbolic bestiaries.
Rarity & Market Overview
Illustrations: Hand-colouring is sometimes found but not consistent. The uncoloured but crisp woodcuts on these leaves are highly desirable for collectors of early marine natural history.
Condition Factors: Complete recto–verso pairs are rarer than isolated leaves. Collectors value spreads where the illustrated Dioscorides page (recto) survives with its matching Mattioli commentary (verso).
The background to this document:
So, just in case you haven’t had enough of this crab and document, here is the timeline of the creation of the original De Materia Medica in the first century through to you holding the print in your hand once you buy it!
1st century AD — Dioscorides composes De Materia Medica, a pharmacological manual describing ~600 plants, animals, and minerals with medicinal uses.
512 AD — The Vienna Dioscorides (Byzantine illuminated manuscript) is created for Princess Anicia Juliana, preserving the text in Greek with lavish illustrations.
9th–10th centuries — De Materia Medica translated into Arabic; widely circulated in the Islamic world with commentaries that later re-enter Europe.
1478 — First printed Latin edition of De Materia Medica (Colle, Italy), bringing the text into Renaissance print culture.
1544 — Pietro Andrea Mattioli publishes his Italian commentary, expanding Dioscorides with Alpine plants, zoological notes, and contemporary medical practice.
1554 — Mattioli issues a Latin edition with hundreds of woodcut illustrations, transforming the work into a Renaissance natural history encyclopedia.
1634 — French edition, Venice (published posthumously by A. Carbout), continuing Mattioli’s influence across Europe.
2025 - You log onto Lumenrare and see this wonderful work, buy it, receive the document in its sealed container by courier, you hold it with the cotton gloves you just bought, you give it a smell and then you dig a hole in your garden and put it in a time capsule for a scientific student to find in another five hundred years.
Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577), Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis (French edition, A. Carbout, Venice, 1634) Hand-illustrated woodcuts on laid paper, folio.
This leaf is from the rare 1634 French edition of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Commentarii on Dioscorides, printed in Venice by A. Carbout. Although Mattioli originally composed his commentary in Italian and later issued Latin editions, his work was translated into French—likely in the mid-16th century in Lyon—to reach a broader audience of physicians and apothecaries. The 1634 reprint preserves that French text, but the identity of the translator remains unknown in surviving records. Because the French edition is less documented and less widely held than the Latin or Italian versions, complete recto–verso leaves from this issue are especially scarce and treasured by collectors.
Recto (p. 199) — Maia & Pagure
Illustration: Two finely detailed woodcuts of crab species:
Maia: depicted with its long spiny legs and broad carapace (likely referencing the spider crab).
Pagure: a squat, heavy-clawed crab (hermit crab forms were often confused with true crabs in Renaissance zoology).
Text: “Sur le II. livre de Diosc.” — describes their names in Greek (Maia, Granceuole), Latin (Pagurus, Granciporri), and vernacular (notre vulgaire Granciporri, Italian Granciporro). Mattioli follows Dioscorides in noting medical uses of burnt crab ashes for dog bites and skin afflictions.
Context: Early modern naturalists lumped together a wide array of crustaceans as “cancri.” This image reflects the Renaissance attempt to classify according to form and local names.
Scholarly significance: These crabs are of particular interest because they represent one of the earliest printed attempts to differentiate between coastal crabs (edible, medicinal) and hermit crabs, a subject much refined in later 17th–18th century zoology (Gesner, Aldrovandi, Rondelet).
Verso (p. 200) — Cancelles & Scorpions
Illustration:
Cancelles: paired engravings of hermit crabs emerging from spiral shells, their “borrowed house.”
Scorpions: lower page filled with multiple woodcut scorpions, naturalistically posed with raised tails.
Text: “Comment. de Matth.” — expands Dioscorides by noting how cancelli combine aspects of fish and shell animals. Early scholars marvelled at the “hybrid” nature of hermit crabs, with soft abdomens that required borrowed shells.
Medical context: Hermit crab ashes and scorpion oils were recommended in remedies against poison and epilepsy, reflecting the Galenic principle of “like cures like.”
Comparative scholarship: This spread is especially valuable because it juxtaposes marine crustaceans (crabs, hermit crabs) with land-dwelling scorpions, showing the porous boundaries between natural history, materia medica, and symbolic bestiaries.
Rarity & Market Overview
Illustrations: Hand-colouring is sometimes found but not consistent. The uncoloured but crisp woodcuts on these leaves are highly desirable for collectors of early marine natural history.
Condition Factors: Complete recto–verso pairs are rarer than isolated leaves. Collectors value spreads where the illustrated Dioscorides page (recto) survives with its matching Mattioli commentary (verso).
The background to this document:
So, just in case you haven’t had enough of this crab and document, here is the timeline of the creation of the original De Materia Medica in the first century through to you holding the print in your hand once you buy it!
1st century AD — Dioscorides composes De Materia Medica, a pharmacological manual describing ~600 plants, animals, and minerals with medicinal uses.
512 AD — The Vienna Dioscorides (Byzantine illuminated manuscript) is created for Princess Anicia Juliana, preserving the text in Greek with lavish illustrations.
9th–10th centuries — De Materia Medica translated into Arabic; widely circulated in the Islamic world with commentaries that later re-enter Europe.
1478 — First printed Latin edition of De Materia Medica (Colle, Italy), bringing the text into Renaissance print culture.
1544 — Pietro Andrea Mattioli publishes his Italian commentary, expanding Dioscorides with Alpine plants, zoological notes, and contemporary medical practice.
1554 — Mattioli issues a Latin edition with hundreds of woodcut illustrations, transforming the work into a Renaissance natural history encyclopedia.
1634 — French edition, Venice (published posthumously by A. Carbout), continuing Mattioli’s influence across Europe.
2025 - You log onto Lumenrare and see this wonderful work, buy it, receive the document in its sealed container by courier, you hold it with the cotton gloves you just bought, you give it a smell and then you dig a hole in your garden and put it in a time capsule for a scientific student to find in another five hundred years.
Pietro Mattioli, 1634, Crabs, Hermit Crabs & Scorpions
Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577), Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis (French edition, A. Carbout, Venice, 1634)
Hand-illustrated woodcuts on laid paper, folio.
This leaf is from the rare 1634 French edition of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Commentarii on Dioscorides, printed in Venice by A. Carbout. Although Mattioli originally composed his commentary in Italian and later issued Latin editions, his work was translated into French—likely in the mid-16th century in Lyon—to reach a broader audience of physicians and apothecaries. The 1634 reprint preserves that French text, but the identity of the translator remains unknown in surviving records. Because the French edition is less documented and less widely held than the Latin or Italian versions, complete recto–verso leaves from this issue are especially scarce and treasured by collectors.
Recto (p. 199) — Maia & Pagure
Illustration: Two finely detailed woodcuts of crab species:
Maia: depicted with its long spiny legs and broad carapace (likely referencing the spider crab).
Pagure: a squat, heavy-clawed crab (hermit crab forms were often confused with true crabs in Renaissance zoology).
Text: “Sur le II. livre de Diosc.” — describes their names in Greek (Maia, Granceuole), Latin (Pagurus, Granciporri), and vernacular (notre vulgaire Granciporri, Italian Granciporro). Mattioli follows Dioscorides in noting medical uses of burnt crab ashes for dog bites and skin afflictions.
Context: Early modern naturalists lumped together a wide array of crustaceans as “cancri.” This image reflects the Renaissance attempt to classify according to form and local names.
Scholarly significance: These crabs are of particular interest because they represent one of the earliest printed attempts to differentiate between coastal crabs (edible, medicinal) and hermit crabs, a subject much refined in later 17th–18th century zoology (Gesner, Aldrovandi, Rondelet).
Verso (p. 200) — Cancelles & Scorpions
Illustration:
Cancelles: paired engravings of hermit crabs emerging from spiral shells, their “borrowed house.”
Scorpions: lower page filled with multiple woodcut scorpions, naturalistically posed with raised tails.
Text: “Comment. de Matth.” — expands Dioscorides by noting how cancelli combine aspects of fish and shell animals. Early scholars marvelled at the “hybrid” nature of hermit crabs, with soft abdomens that required borrowed shells.
Medical context: Hermit crab ashes and scorpion oils were recommended in remedies against poison and epilepsy, reflecting the Galenic principle of “like cures like.”
Comparative scholarship: This spread is especially valuable because it juxtaposes marine crustaceans (crabs, hermit crabs) with land-dwelling scorpions, showing the porous boundaries between natural history, materia medica, and symbolic bestiaries.
Rarity & Market Overview
Illustrations: Hand-colouring is sometimes found but not consistent. The uncoloured but crisp woodcuts on these leaves are highly desirable for collectors of early marine natural history.
Condition Factors: Complete recto–verso pairs are rarer than isolated leaves. Collectors value spreads where the illustrated Dioscorides page (recto) survives with its matching Mattioli commentary (verso).
The background to this document:
So, just in case you haven’t had enough of this crab and document, here is the timeline of the creation of the original De Materia Medica in the first century through to you holding the print in your hand once you buy it!
1st century AD — Dioscorides composes De Materia Medica, a pharmacological manual describing ~600 plants, animals, and minerals with medicinal uses.
512 AD — The Vienna Dioscorides (Byzantine illuminated manuscript) is created for Princess Anicia Juliana, preserving the text in Greek with lavish illustrations.
9th–10th centuries — De Materia Medica translated into Arabic; widely circulated in the Islamic world with commentaries that later re-enter Europe.
1478 — First printed Latin edition of De Materia Medica (Colle, Italy), bringing the text into Renaissance print culture.
1544 — Pietro Andrea Mattioli publishes his Italian commentary, expanding Dioscorides with Alpine plants, zoological notes, and contemporary medical practice.
1554 — Mattioli issues a Latin edition with hundreds of woodcut illustrations, transforming the work into a Renaissance natural history encyclopedia.
1634 — French edition, Venice (published posthumously by A. Carbout), continuing Mattioli’s influence across Europe.
2025 - You log onto Lumenrare and see this wonderful work, buy it, receive the document in its sealed container by courier, you hold it with the cotton gloves you just bought, you give it a smell and then you dig a hole in your garden and put it in a time capsule for a scientific student to find in another five hundred years.
Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577), Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis (French edition, A. Carbout, Venice, 1634)
Hand-illustrated woodcuts on laid paper, folio.
This leaf is from the rare 1634 French edition of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Commentarii on Dioscorides, printed in Venice by A. Carbout. Although Mattioli originally composed his commentary in Italian and later issued Latin editions, his work was translated into French—likely in the mid-16th century in Lyon—to reach a broader audience of physicians and apothecaries. The 1634 reprint preserves that French text, but the identity of the translator remains unknown in surviving records. Because the French edition is less documented and less widely held than the Latin or Italian versions, complete recto–verso leaves from this issue are especially scarce and treasured by collectors.
Recto (p. 199) — Maia & Pagure
Illustration: Two finely detailed woodcuts of crab species:
Maia: depicted with its long spiny legs and broad carapace (likely referencing the spider crab).
Pagure: a squat, heavy-clawed crab (hermit crab forms were often confused with true crabs in Renaissance zoology).
Text: “Sur le II. livre de Diosc.” — describes their names in Greek (Maia, Granceuole), Latin (Pagurus, Granciporri), and vernacular (notre vulgaire Granciporri, Italian Granciporro). Mattioli follows Dioscorides in noting medical uses of burnt crab ashes for dog bites and skin afflictions.
Context: Early modern naturalists lumped together a wide array of crustaceans as “cancri.” This image reflects the Renaissance attempt to classify according to form and local names.
Scholarly significance: These crabs are of particular interest because they represent one of the earliest printed attempts to differentiate between coastal crabs (edible, medicinal) and hermit crabs, a subject much refined in later 17th–18th century zoology (Gesner, Aldrovandi, Rondelet).
Verso (p. 200) — Cancelles & Scorpions
Illustration:
Cancelles: paired engravings of hermit crabs emerging from spiral shells, their “borrowed house.”
Scorpions: lower page filled with multiple woodcut scorpions, naturalistically posed with raised tails.
Text: “Comment. de Matth.” — expands Dioscorides by noting how cancelli combine aspects of fish and shell animals. Early scholars marvelled at the “hybrid” nature of hermit crabs, with soft abdomens that required borrowed shells.
Medical context: Hermit crab ashes and scorpion oils were recommended in remedies against poison and epilepsy, reflecting the Galenic principle of “like cures like.”
Comparative scholarship: This spread is especially valuable because it juxtaposes marine crustaceans (crabs, hermit crabs) with land-dwelling scorpions, showing the porous boundaries between natural history, materia medica, and symbolic bestiaries.
Rarity & Market Overview
Illustrations: Hand-colouring is sometimes found but not consistent. The uncoloured but crisp woodcuts on these leaves are highly desirable for collectors of early marine natural history.
Condition Factors: Complete recto–verso pairs are rarer than isolated leaves. Collectors value spreads where the illustrated Dioscorides page (recto) survives with its matching Mattioli commentary (verso).
The background to this document:
So, just in case you haven’t had enough of this crab and document, here is the timeline of the creation of the original De Materia Medica in the first century through to you holding the print in your hand once you buy it!
1st century AD — Dioscorides composes De Materia Medica, a pharmacological manual describing ~600 plants, animals, and minerals with medicinal uses.
512 AD — The Vienna Dioscorides (Byzantine illuminated manuscript) is created for Princess Anicia Juliana, preserving the text in Greek with lavish illustrations.
9th–10th centuries — De Materia Medica translated into Arabic; widely circulated in the Islamic world with commentaries that later re-enter Europe.
1478 — First printed Latin edition of De Materia Medica (Colle, Italy), bringing the text into Renaissance print culture.
1544 — Pietro Andrea Mattioli publishes his Italian commentary, expanding Dioscorides with Alpine plants, zoological notes, and contemporary medical practice.
1554 — Mattioli issues a Latin edition with hundreds of woodcut illustrations, transforming the work into a Renaissance natural history encyclopedia.
1634 — French edition, Venice (published posthumously by A. Carbout), continuing Mattioli’s influence across Europe.
2025 - You log onto Lumenrare and see this wonderful work, buy it, receive the document in its sealed container by courier, you hold it with the cotton gloves you just bought, you give it a smell and then you dig a hole in your garden and put it in a time capsule for a scientific student to find in another five hundred years.