Las Poësias Famosas…[Flor de Apolo], Miguel de Barrios, Antwerp: G & J Verdussen, 1674 [Balthazar Vivien: Brussels, 1665]

278 [of 280] pages (8 1/2 x 6 3/8 in.; 216 x 163 mm) pagination: [24], 1-104, 107-256= 278 pp. lacking pp. 105-6 (these 2 pages also absent in the copy of the Biblioteca Nacional de España.) First edition (1665) with cancel title page (1674). Title in red and black. Numerous engravings by Peeter Clouwet and Adrian Melaer. Headpieces, initials, tailpieces. Some leaves browned. Contemporary limp vellum.

 

M. Kayserling, Biblioteca Española-Portugueza-Judaica, pp. 16-17 (though unknown to him in this state.)

WITH THE VERY RARE CANCEL TITLE PAGE

Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrios (1635–1701), was born in Montilla, Spain into a Portuguese Marrano family who fled the Iberian Peninsula after the execution of one of his relatives by the Inquisition in 1655.  Though he reverted to Judaism in Livorno, when Barrios moved to the Netherlands in 1662, he accepted  a Spanish military commission and for the next 12 years, lived outwardly as a Christian in Brussels, while simultaneously maintaining a connection with the Jewish community in Amsterdam. In 1674, Barrios renounced his military commission and thereafter lived openly as a professing Jew in Amsterdam. His first literary work, Flor de Apolo was published in Brussels in 1665. This collection of poetry on varied themes, considered his finest work, featured a series of high quality engravings by Peeter Clouwet, and Adrian Melaer illustrating poems which are often secular in nature, but which also include biblical figures and imagery. Following the death of the printer Balthasar Vivien, the entire contents of the press were sold to the brothers Verdussen, who replaced the title pages on the few remaining copies of Barrios' masterwork, with title pages naming them as printers. Copies with this cancel title page are exceedingly scarce.