Li Miraculi de la Madonna Facsimile Edition

This copy is the second known of this edition nowadays in the world.

The other one is kept in Fundazione Cini, in Venice.

It was already heard of this rare copy, at the start of the XX century from Leo S. Olschki in "Livres inconnus des bibliographes" (in La Bibliofilía, XV (1913-1914), pages 184-185, núm. 40) when describing a copy belonging then to  "Biblioteca Melzi" owned by Mse. Louise di Soragna Melzi) from Milano.

Printed in 4.°, in round lettering, with a xylographic initial and provisional small letters for initials, it displays 25 prints, sandwiched in the text, some of them repeated, of different sizes.

One print is a figure on the front cover under the title Il miraculi de la madonna, this print is repeated on the front page of the second sheet, where the text really started; but in this case, print, text and initial appear inside and architectural ornament made by four parts.

A beautiful, strange and odd book, which shows slightly cut off the ornament on the front page of the second sheet, and it offers an unnamed Italian text in 62 chapters, that is to say, 62 Marian miracles; as it is explained on a table at the end. 

In the copy Miracoli della Vergine Maria it only says the printing was made in Venice and that it was finished the 2nd of March 1496, but it does not say the printer's name.

The study of the typographic material has allowed the incunabula experts to assign the printing to the Venetian workshop belonging to Simon de Gabis or Simon de Bevilaqua, from Pavía, which rarely showed his real name, favouring his nickname, that is to say the second shown alternative, probably to mock him. He firstly kept active a workshop in Vicenza. There are five printings made there between December 1487 and November 1491, and a sixth one without typographic indications.

From 1492 onwards he moved to Venice where he kept working even at the end of the century. It is a workshop with many typescripts, three typographic marks and many xylographic tools for initials and ornaments.