Beschreibung:

ALBERTUS MAGNUS (attributed to). Paradisus animae, sive Tractatus de virtutibus . [?Basel: Printer of Albertus Magnus, De virtutibus (Johann Schilling), not after 29 May 1473]. Chancery 2° (277 x 201mm). Collation: [1-3 1 0] (1/1 blank, 1/2r text, 3/10r chapter headings, 3/10v blank). 30 leaves. 38 lines, double column. Type: 1:98G. 2- to 4-line initials and paragraph marks in red. (Single small wormhole in extreme fore-edge margin, short repaired marginal tear in final 2 leaves.) Early 20th-century maroon crushed morocco, flat spine lettered in gilt. Provenance : title written on first blank recto in a contemporary hand; W.J. Leighton (bookseller, sale of his stock, Sotheby's, 13 May 1919, lot 823, £8.10 to Quaritch); Harmsworth Trust (sale Sotheby's, 7 July 1947, lot 3020, £20 to Foyle). FIRST EDITION. This devotional tract, ascribed to Albert the Great, describes the path leading to union of the soul with God, beginning in recollection and progressing to contemplation and meditation. Five editions have been assigned to this eponymous press, of which the eponym is one of the earliest, now identified as the shop of Johannes Schilling Active in Cologne ca. 1470-72, Schilling later printed at Basel, and Needham has argued for locating these five editions at Basel on the basis of the type in the three later editions, which has new sorts probably cut and cast by the lettercutter Hans Frank (cf. 'William Caxton and his Cologne Partners', Ars Impressoria ... Festgabe für Severin Corsten , 1986, pp.103-131). HC *476; BMC I, 236 IIB. 3856-7); BSB A-190; Goff A-290; GW 703; Voullième(K) 55.