The 1517 Lyon Vergil in Its Original Binding, with Exceptional Contemporary Colouring
Vergilius Maro, Publius. Opera Vergiliana docte et familiariter exposita […]. 2 volumes in 1. Lyon, Jacques Sacon for Ciriacus Hochperg, 1517.
One of the most visually extraordinary Renaissance editions of Virgil ever produced: the 1517 Lyon folio reusing the famous Strasbourg woodcuts first created for Johannes Grüninger’s celebrated 1502 Virgil edition, here preserved in magnificent contemporary hand-colouring throughout.
The edition contains more than 208 woodcuts, almost all full text-width illustrations, coloured in rich differentiated tones by an early sixteenth-century hand. According to the catalogue research, this appears to be the only originally coloured copy to have surfaced on the market in the last century.
Edition & Physical Description
Two volumes bound in one folio volume (approximately 325 × 218 mm), printed in black and red.
The text is arranged predominantly in double columns with surrounding scholarly commentary printed in smaller Roman type. Both title pages are printed in red and black within large architectural woodcut borders. The volume contains 208 woodcuts together with numerous decorative initials, all contemporary coloured by hand.
Contemporary brown calf over bevelled wooden boards on four raised bands, decorated in blind with roll tools and fillets, the front cover stamped in gold “Virgilius” and dated “151…”. The binding survives with its original brass clasp fittings, though the straps themselves are lacking.
Virgil as the “Book of Books”
For the Middle Ages and Renaissance alike, Virgil occupied a position almost without parallel among pagan authors.
He was regarded not merely as the greatest Roman poet but as the poet — a prophetic and quasi-sacred authority whose writings could stand beside biblical and theological traditions. Medieval readers interpreted Virgil as a herald of Christ and the coming golden age, while Renaissance humanists increasingly approached him simultaneously as poet, stylist, moral authority, and political thinker.
The edition gathers the complete Virgilian corpus with extensive commentary by Servius, Donatus, Antonio Mancinello, Filippo Beroaldo, Iodocus Badius Ascensius, and others, reflecting the immense philological culture surrounding Virgil in the early sixteenth century.
The Bucolics evoke an ideal pastoral golden age; the Georgics transform agricultural labour into a moral and civilizing force; and the Aeneid elevates exile, warfare, and state foundation into a universal imperial narrative culminating in Rome itself. Included as well is the immensely popular thirteenth book by Mapheus Vegius, composed in 1428 to complete the story after the death of Turnus and the triumph of Aeneas.
The Strasbourg Woodcuts
The illustrations derive directly from the famous Strasbourg Virgil first printed by Johannes Grüninger in 1502.
That edition, supervised within the intellectual world of Sebastian Brant, became one of the most celebrated illustrated classical books of the Renaissance. The woodcuts famously translated antiquity into the visual world of contemporary Alsace: Roman warriors resemble Landsknechte, cities resemble Strasbourg, and pastoral scenes unfold like northern European village life around 1500.
By the time Jacques Sacon reused the blocks in Lyon in 1517, many already showed visible signs of wear, cracks, and repairs. Yet in the present copy this becomes almost irrelevant because of the astonishing contemporary colouring, executed with remarkable variation and sophistication across the entire cycle.
The colouring transforms the illustrations from reproductive woodcuts into something approaching illuminated paintings on paper. Blues, reds, greens, ochres, and flesh tones are applied with unusual care and differentiation throughout the volume.
A Humanist Schoolbook with Personal History
The provenance of the volume offers a fascinating glimpse into the educational and intellectual culture of Alsace across two centuries.
An early ownership inscription points to the Jesuit College at Molsheim, founded in 1580 as one of the principal Counter-Reformation institutions in Alsace. Virgil formed part of the essential philological and rhetorical training of the school.
Particularly striking are the heavy annotations surrounding the famous Fourth Eclogue, with its prophetic vision of a coming golden age and miraculous child. Readers clearly approached the text not merely as literature but as something bordering on sacred prophecy.
Later inscriptions document the book’s passage into private ownership. In 1686 the young Strasbourg law student Johann Caspar Bitsch inscribed the volume and underlined passages associated with virtue, labour, and moral discipline. The annotations preserve the traces of multiple generations of humanist reading and study.
Provenance
Jesuit College at Molsheim in Alsace. Later owned by Johann Caspar Bitsch (1668–1721), member of a Strasbourg legal family closely connected to the university. French private collection.
Literature
Adams V 468; Baudrier XII, 344ff.; BM STC French 442; Brunet V, 1282; Mortimer, French 537M; Renouard III, 364f.; Schweiger II/2, 1157.
For a fuller scholarly description and illustrations, see Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, number 39:
Wunderkammer Catalogue 90, Volume I
