Passover Haggadah – With Many Decorations and Illustrations – Venice, 1604 – Only Known Complete Copy

Passover Haggadah – With Many Decorations and Illustrations – Venice, 1604 – Only Known Complete Copy

Beautifully illustrated Passover Haggadah, with the commentary of R. Yosef of Padua. Venice: Zuan di Gara, 1604.
Each page of the Haggadah is decorated with various woodcut illustrations. Some illustrations are captioned.
The Seder steps are printed on the verso of the title page, with a brief trilingual commentary: Italian, Yiddish and Spanish, printed side by side in three columns, in Hebrew characters.
The Haggadah begins with Bedikat Chametz. P. [3a] opens with the words: "KeHa Lachma Anya".
Birkat HaMazon (Sephardi rite) is printed on the final two leaves, with divisional title page.
On the final page, after Birkat HaMazon, novella by R. Moshe Alshech on the Seder steps (from Torat Moshe by the Alshech, Venice, 1601; this passage also appears in the Haggadah printed in Venice in 1601 by Zanetti).

[18] leaves. 22.5 cm. Fair-good condition. Stains, including large dampstains. Wear. Open tears to first two leaves, affecting title page border, illustrations and text, repaired with paper and photocopy replacement. Minor open tears in several other places, affecting text. Worming, slightly affecting text. Leaves trimmed with damage to ornaments on several leaves. Early card binding, damaged and detached.

Several Haggadot were printed in Venice in 1599-1605, with similar layouts and general design, but differing typographically in the title page border, type, ornaments and illustrations. The present Haggadah is similar to the one printed by Di Gara in 1599. See: Y. Yudlov, Passover Haggadot Printed in Venice 1601, 1603-1604, Alei Sefer, XVI, 1990, pp. 140-141.
To the best of our knowledge, the present copy is the only complete copy in the world. There is another copy in the JTS Library in New York, lacking the final two leaves with Birkat HaMazon.
Yaari 31; Otzar HaHaggadot 41.