An attractive, much-used copy of the second, revised edition of Adolphus Occo's (1524-1606) landmark numismatic work, his study of ancient coins from Pompey the Great and the late Roman Republic to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, carefully extra-illustrated - grangerised - by a later reader.
Neither the first edition of 1579, nor the present second edition of Occo's works were illustrated, something that the later owner of this copy has remedied by carefully cutting engravings of coins from at least two different sources and pasting them into their book. There are a little over 300 coins pasted onto the front pastedown and in the blank margins of the first nearly 200 pages, and around a further hundred tucked singly and in larger groups between relevant pages. There is a density of added illustrations for Claudius and Nero; in all cases, each additional coin pasted in corresponds directly with the coin being described in the text. We have been able to identify two sources for the coins, though they are not exclusively from those two works: the woodcut roundels affixed to the front pastedown are from a post-1600 edition of Guillaume Rouillé's Promptuarium Iconum Insignorium (aside from the later depiction of Louis XIIII at the foot); several of those in the blank margins are from Enea Vico's Augustarum Imagines.
Both are requisite works in any numismatic library, and suggest an expert, and certainly enthusiastic, reader and collector.
Loose manuscript note in nineteenth-century hand tucked before front free endpaper describes the edition, binding and additional illustrations, 'découpées et disséminées dans le volume', nineteenth-century engraving of a trumpet-bearing angel pasted to verso of front free endpaper, cut from a printed book. Pencilled manuscript notes and crosses in later margins, and both pencilled and inked marks alongside index of emperors at rear.
Dekesel II, p.1963. VD17 23:230233Z.
