ABSTRACT
The 1476 edition of Boccaccio’s De Casibus virorum illustrium by Colard Mansion (Goff B-711) is the first printed book designed to contain, in some copies, pastedin engravings.1 The engravings destined for this book are large, and the pages on which these engravings were to appear had to be reset to accommodate them. The several forms in which this book is now found are functions of these reset pages, and I will use, whenever possible, one of the more neutral terms variant or even form to describe what bibliographers of this book have variously described as its three, four, or five variants, states, impressions, issues, and even editions.2 In a 1927 article in Gutenberg Jahrbuch, Seymour De Ricci added two American copies to the then eleven known copies of this book, and defined in bibliographical terms what he called the four issues (tirages) the extant copies represent.3 Yet having distinguished these forms and systematized the bibliographical language
1 Engravings are reproduced with survey of individual copies by Max Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischen Katalog des deutschen, niederländischen und französischen Kupferstichs im 15. Jahrhundert, 9 vols (Vienna, 1908-1934), 4: 165-87; F.W.H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, ca. 1450-1700 (Amsterdam, 1949-), 12: 118-22; earlier by David Laing, Facsimiles of Designs from Engraved copperplates illustrating Le Livre de la Ruyne des Nobles Hommes et Femmes par Jehan Bocace de Certald: imprimé par Colard Mansion Anno M.cccc.lxxvi (Edinburgh, 1878).
