Incunabulum by Aldus Manutius with works by Aristotle

This is the second of the five volumes of Aristotle’s Complete Works published in Greek by the Italian humanist Aldus Manutius in Venice between 1495 and 1498. It was the first printed edition of Aristotle’s works in Greek and one of the most ambitious publishing projects of the 15th century. The volume in the collections of the Canellopoulos Museum has around 600 pages and includes the works The Physics, On the heavens, On Generation and Corruption, Meteorology and On the Cosmos, as well as selected texts by Theophrastus, Galen and Philo of Alexandria.

The invention of mechanical printing was one of the greatest revolutions in the history of human communication. Printed books were easier and cheaper to produce than manuscripts and cheaper, and thus helped to gradually increase people’s access to knowledge. The first book to be printed on a mechanical press was the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. Soon, works by writers from Greek and Roman antiquity, known until then only from manuscripts held in university and monastery libraries, began to appear in print. All books printed before 1500 are known as ‘incunabula”.

Unpublished