Pictura Loquens; sive heroicarum tabularum Hadriani Schoonebeeck, Enarratio et Explicatio.

Amsterdam: ex Officina Hadriani Schoonebeek 1695, 1695. Only edition. 8vo. 180x112mm. [16], 240, [16]. Engraved frontispiece, engraved portrait on verso of title page and sixty engravings by Adriaan Schoonebeeck. Slightly later full calf, borders in blind and gilt, spine with five raised bands, compartments decorated in gilt and blind and lettered in gilt. Turn ins decorated with gilt roll. All edges gilt with delicate gauffering. Internally near fine save for a closed tear to E7 (not affecting text). A very nice copy of the only edition of this attractively illustrated work on history painting which takes its title from Simonides of Keos's observation "Poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens," (Poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry). To demonstrate the truth of this, Smids and Schoonebeeck each picture accompanies a text from Latin poetry or history with an explanation of the meaning of the text. So we find Hercules alongside an extract from Ovid's Metamorphosis, Aeneas carrying Anchises to safety with the relevant passage from Virgil. The text is by Ludolph Smids, a classical scholar from Groningen while the excellent engravings are by Adriaan Schoonbeeck who had his own printing works in Amsterdam before moving to Moscow in 1698 at the invitation of Peter the Great where he ran an engraving workshop.