8vo. XVI (including frontispiece),407;(47 index),(2 blank) p. Calf 15.5 cm (Details:.Back gilt and with 5 raised bands. The frontispiece, designed and executed by Jan Goeree, depicts an allegorical scene, which may refer to passages in the second and sixth book of the 'Zodiacus Vitae', called Taurus and Virgo. It shows a laureated woman, Poetry, who shakes hands with death, and at the same time clings with her left arm to a bust of the virtuous goddess of wisdom Athena. Her feet rest on a bag of gold and a scepter. Next to her stands a winged putto, scourge at hand, who reveals gold and other treasures of the church that lay hidden below a piece of cloth. Above them, on a monument, the wellknown scene of Hercules on the crossroads, where he meets two women, personifications of Virtue and Vice. They both advice Hercules to follow the road they show him. Virtue, depicted here as Athena, points at a narrow rocky and steep path at the end of which he will find a reward. Vice, who is stripped to the waist, offers Hercules pleasure, crowns and wealth; she points at the easy road. The message is clear, the highest good can not be found in wealth and profane goods but in virtue combined with wisdom. At the end of the sixth book, Virgo, the poet concludes, having considered the endless miseries of humankind, that we should not fear death, but that we must embrace her/him as a safe haven. The woodcut printer's mark shows the intertwined initials of the publisher Johannes Hofhout. The title is printed in red and black. Each of the 12 songs is preceded by a useful synopsis) (Condition: Binding scuffed. Tip at the head of the spine worn away. Gilt on the back fading. Front joint cracked, still strong, but showing some small damage. Bookplate on the front pastedown. Endpapers worn and yellowing. Some old ink underlinings) (Note: The real name of the Italian neolatin poet Marcello Palingenio Stellato, or in Latin Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus, was in 1725 revealed by I. Facciolati in a letter to the German bibliographer J.A. Fabricius. Marcello Palingenio is an anagram for the name of the Italian courtier Pier Angelo Manzol(l)i, born to a humble family in La Stellata, near Ferrara, between 1500 and 1503. He died before 1558. Recent research (Bacchelli 1985) points in a completely different direction. On the basis of indications in the privilege for the printing of the Zodiacus, granted in Venice in 1535 to one Marcellus Stellato Neapolitanus, it is thought that Marcellus may have been born in Campania, and that his real name was Marcello Stellato (or Stellati), a family name attested in area of Campania, thus denying the attribution of the poem to Pier Angelo Manzoli. A weak point is that the appellation 'Palingenio' is here hard to explain. Anyway, of the author's life little is known. It is assumed that he was a medical doctor. He was at one point suspected of heterodoxy, perhaps because he was a member of the Calvinist circle of Renata d'Este. After his death his bones were dug up, following a process of heresy under pope Paulus III, and burned at the stake. A Vatican codex, which includes documents of the Congregation of the Index of the years 1571-90, informs us that the unearthing of Marcello,'nihil credens neque divinitatem Christi', took place in Cesena, without, however, indicating the date, while in November 1558 the Bolognese Jesuit Francesco Palmio informed his general G. Lainez that his body was publicly exhumed and burned, because of certain heretic books Palingenius had composed. The cause of this exhumation may well have been his 'Zodiacus Vitae', a poem in 12 songs (9939 hexameters), each song taking its name from one the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It was written between 1520 and 1534, and was dedicated to Ercole II d'Este. These songs do not form a coherent unity, and contain a variety of didactic, moralistic, metaphysical, astronomical and frequently satirical passages. The work was placed on the Index in 1558; and perhaps because of this, in addition to its intrinsic qualities and its attacks upon the Catholic clergy, it was widely read and admired in Protestant countries. In England it was even used as a school text, both in Latin and English. It was imitated in, and translated into several languages. The main theme is the 'highest good', and around this are woven other secondary themes. There are contradictions, repetitions, and none of the questions dealt with is original. Yet the Zodiacus is a characteristic and interesting work, for its dealing with important philosophical questions and the author's noble intent to offer the reader a poetic code of rule how to live wisely. Its literary value lies in its ornate style and the freedom with which it treats the Latin language. Most importantly, the poem shows traits of true and heartfelt poetry, as found in some particularly sharp satiric attacks upon the clergy, in certain similes and in outpourings of real pessimism. (Source: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 69 (2007), and Enciclopedia Italiana (1934)) (Provenance: On the front pastedown the armorial bookplate of 'The Right Honorable Sir John Trollope, Bar-t. M.P.' Probably Sir John Trollope, 1800-1874, 7th Baronet of Casewick in the county of Lincoln, and created Baron Kesteven in 1868. He was a conservative politician, and M.P. for Lincolnshire South. (See Wikipedia 'John Trollope, 1st Baron Kesteven', and 'Trollope Baronets')) (Collation: pi1 (frontispiece), *8 (minus leaf *1); A-2C8, 2D-2G4, 2H4 (leaf 2H4 is a blank, and located between the leaves 2H1 and 2H2 because of a binder's error)) (Photographs on request)