PLINE L'ANCIEN. Historia naturalis. Parma, Andrea Portilia, 8 July 1481. Large folio (41 x 27 cm) of [266] pages (of 268), marbled calf, spine decorated, red edges (18th century binding). A sumptuous and very rare Parmesan incunabulum printed in Roman script. This is the ninth or tenth edition of the most famous scientific encyclopaedia of antiquity, published only twelve years after the Venetian editio princeps. No fewer than forty-six editions of Pliny's Natural History appeared during the first century of printing, eighteen of them before 1500. This is the third edition printed in Parma: Stefano Corallo published the first in 1476, and Andrea Portilia the next two in 1480 and 1481. It incorporates the annotations by the Bolognese humanist Filippo Beroaldo (1453-1505), which were first published in Stefano Corallo's Parma edition. The thirty-seven books of the encyclopaedia compiled by Pliny the Elder (23-79) from around a hundred ancient sources form an "inventory of the world" encompassing all the knowledge useful to mankind: astronomy, geography, zoology, botany, medicine and remedies, arts and techniques, and so on. The large chapter devoted to ancient art (mineralogy, sculpture, metallurgy, the working of precious stones, etc.) was one of the most consulted sources during the Renaissance. The volume is entirely headed in red and decorated with large initials finely painted in red and blue at the head of each book. A few handwritten annotations from the period in the margins of the text. A very fine copy, with wide margins and admirably preserved. An errata leaf is missing at the end of the volume (ee4), as well as the first and last leaves, both blank (a1 and ee6). Minor rubbing to binding; discreet repair to margins of three leaves (a2, D1, ee5). ISTC ip00793000 - HC 13094 - Pell-Pol 9361 - Goff P-793 - CIBN, P-464 - BMC VII, 937 - GW, M34304 - Brunet, IV, 714.