1775 ❧ One of only two medical books printed by a private press. SANTORINI, GIOVANNI DOMENICO. 1681- ca 1737. Anatomici summi septemdecim tabulae quas nunc primum edit atque explicat iisque alias addit de structura mammarum et de tunica testis vaginali. Edited by Michael Girardi. Parma: [Giambattista Bodoni for] Regia typographia, 1775. 4to (363 x 244 mm). Frontispiece portrait and 42 engraved plates by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and others (including 21 outline key plates). Contemporary red and green stained mottled calf, sides with triple fillet border, spine in six compartments elaborately gilt, dark green gilt lettered morocco spine label in second (some light wear to sides and edges). Provenance: Ira M. Rutkow (pencil signature on rear flyleaf); Dean Edell (sold Christie's New York 10 May, 2007, lot 108) FIRST EDITION. Santorini's posthumously published Septemdecim tabulae is noteworthy as the only significant medical book from the press of the great Italian printer Giambattista Bodoni printer to the Duke of Parma and creator of the 'modern' style typeface now named for him. Like William Hunter's Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus , Santorini's work is one of the very few medical books issued by a private press. The first 17 plates in the work, the 'septemdecim tabulae' of the title, were drawn by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754), and engraved by Florentia Marcella under Santorini's personal supervision. Santorini intended them for an enlarged edition of his Observationes anatomicae (1724), but died before completing this task. The plates were published 38 years after Santorini's death by Michael Girardi, a professor of anatomy at Parma, who added to them two plates by the anatomist Giovanni Battista Covoli, as well as two of his own. Girardi also prepared the extensive commentary, using portions of Santorini's and Covoli's posthumous writings. Santorini's plates illustrate several complex features of the human body, including the facial muscles, organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, the breasts, the diaphragm, the intestines, the bladder and the genitals. Covoli's plates show various parts of the female breast, as does Girardi's first plate; his second plate shows a partially dissected six-month fetus. Santorini's name has been given to the arytenoid cartilages, the risorius muscle and the plexus pudendalis venosus. Choulant-Frank, pp. 262-64; Garrison-Morton 399.1; Heirs of Hippocrates 788; Norman 1888; Waller 8476 (lacking portrait). For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing