BIDLOO, GOVARD

Ontleding des Menschelyken Lichaams. Amsterdam: widow of Joannes van Someren, heirs of Joannes van Dyk, Hendrik Boom and the widow of Dirk Boom: 1690. First edition in Dutch. Canvas over boards, 21 x 14 3/4 inches (53 x 38 cm). 67 pp.; [2], 1-10, [1], 11-105 engraved plates, one folding. Binding worn, canvas soiled with a few small tears exposing old leather underneath. Bottom forecorners bruised causing the board to delaminate. Ownership stamp of J.H. Hunt, Librarian and President of the Medical Society of the County of Kings to front cover and front free endpaper. Bookplate of the Library of the Medical Society of the County of Kings to front pastedown, library stamp to title page and to the blank versos of all plates. Engraved title-page is slightly creased, there is some light thumbsoiling throughout. The folding plate has a long paper repair, plate 76 has a short closed tear, and a few other plates have short marginal tears or repairs. The bifolium bearing plates 41 and 42 is nearly detached from the textblock; other gatherings are a bit loose but holding in place.

Bidloo's famous medical atlas in the vernacular. Govard Bidloo was the personal physician to William of Orange, a professor of anatomy and medicine at the University of Leiden, and head of the Dutch national hospital service. This volume is the first vernacular edition of Bidloo's Anatomia Humani Corporis, with the plates after Gerard de Lairesse. Cushing B376; Garrison-Morton 388; Wellcome II, p. 165.

Provenance: J.H. Hunt—Academy of Medicine of Brooklyn (sale, Swann, 16 March 1972)—Freidus Collection of Baroque Book Illustration (sale, Sotheby's, 15 June 1990)