INCUNABULUM. — From the Latin incunabula, “swaddling clothes,” a noun denoting every book printed from the year 1455 to the year 1500, a conventional date after which a printed book is no longer called an incunabulum but a “cinquecentino.”
The first incunabulum is the so-called 42-line Bible or Gutenberg Bible (v.), named after the printer believed to have printed it in Mainz.
From Germany, the art of printing spread to other European countries, so much so that by the end of the 15th century a very large number of printers, settled or itinerant, practiced their craft in Italy, France, Holland, Belgium, and Spain. The incunabulum presents several special characteristics: the almost total absence of a title page, replaced in most cases by a half-title; the lack of pagination; the presence of signatures; typographical notes at the end of the text; the presence of a register; and the quality of the paper, thick, durable, with a great variety of watermark designs. The illustration of the incunabulum consists of woodcuts (v. INCISIONE) or wood engravings; rough in Germany, lively and often humorous in France, in Italy it is splendid in grace, especially in books printed in Venice and Florence. Notable among all are the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed in Venice by Aldo Manuzio in 1499, the Fasciculus medicinae, likewise printed in Venice in 1495, and the Morgante Maggiore, printed in Florence in 1500.
From the 18th century onward, with the advance of culture, the earliest printed books began to be highly prized and to become the subject of study and the object of collecting.
Before the Second World War the most important collection was represented by the State Library of