One Thousand Years of Bibliophily From the 17th to the 21st Century PrPh Books Philobiblon 26 E 64th Street via Antonio Bertoloni 45 NY 10065 - New York 00197 - Roma +1 (646) 370-4657 +39 06 4555 5970 [email protected] via Borgonuovo 12 20121 - Milano +39 02 8907 6643 [email protected] Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco via Accademia Albertina 3bis Philobiblon Uk Ltd 10123 - Torino correspondence address: +39 011 81 77 114 Third Floor, Carrington House, [email protected] 126-130 Regent Street London, W1B 5SD One Thousand Years of Bibliophily From the 17th to the 21st Century One Thousand Years of Bibliophily From the 11th to the 15th Century (items nos. 1 - 44) The Sixteenth Century (items nos. 45 - 178) From the 17th to the 21st Century (items nos. 179 - 290) Wind Roses and Compasses 179 Padovani, Fabrizio (fl. 16th-17th century). Tractatus duo, alter De Ventis, alter perbrevis De Terraemotu. Adiecto indice copiosissimo... Bologna, Giovanni Battista Bellagamba, 1601. Folio (312x217 mm). Collation: †4, A4, B4+1 (a singleton signed B3 added after quire B), C-Y4. [8], 1-16, 17*-18*, 17-163 [i.e. 165], [13] pages. Italic, roman, and Greek type. Woodcut printer’s device on the title-page. Thirty-nine engravings, including three full-page. Woodcut decorated initials, head- and tailpieces. Contemporary cardboards. A very fine, wide-margined copy. The rare first and only edition of this finely illustrated book, including fine engraved maps and plates of wind roses and compasses, among other technologies and technical schemata. The work is by Fabrizio Padovani, the ‘philosophus ac medicus’ from Forlì; it addresses the effects of winds and contains a full-page chart of the world, the Carta Marina, which also shows the Americas in a style that recalls the famous Nova Tabula executed by Giacomo Gastaldi for the Italian edition of Ptolemy’s Geography in 1548. As announced on the title-page, the last leaves concern earthquakes, as it was traditionally believed these could be caused by subterranean winds. Padovani based his illustrations primarily on historical sources – above all Pliny – as well as contemporary accounts. He “envisioned an early warning system for earthquakes, and, also, categorized phenomena that were either concurrent with or subsequent to an earthquake, similarly to the typology of things seen before, during, and after an eruption that Vesuvius writers described three decades later. Earthquakes were more frequent than eruptions, and in this respect he was not lacking in a language of observation” (S. Cocco, Watching Vesuvius, p. 31). The work is especially praised for the handsome illustrative apparatus, and the engravings depicting wind roses are of the highest quality. Bruni-Evans 4375; Alden 601.78; Honeyman VI, 2387; Riccardi I, pp. 230-231; Shirley 232 (world map); S. Cocco, Watching Vesuvius: A History of Science and Culture in Early Modern Italy, Chicago 2013, pp. 29-32. 7 The correct eyebrows’ length 180 Olmo, Marco Antonio (fl. 16th-17th century). Physiologia Barbae Humanae. In tres sectiones divisa, hoc est de fine illius philosophico, & medico. Bologna, Giovanni Battista Bellagamba, 1601. Folio (286x198 mm). Collation: †4, ††6, A-I4, L-Y4, Z1 (singleton), Aa-Rr4, Ss2. [20], 1-72, 81-317, [1] pages. The book is complete: quire K omitted by the printer. Roman and italic type. Title-page printed in red and black with woodcut coat of arms of Pietro Aldobrandini, the dedicatee of the work. Woodcut on fol. Y1r. Contemporary limp vellum. Smooth spine, title inked vertically. Covers lightly stained, minor wear to the upper board edge of the lower cover. A very good copy, title-page slightly browned, a few stains and spots. Fol. Y1 mounted on onglet. Provenance: the Count Arthur Dillon (d. 1893; ex-libris on the front pastedown). Rare first edition of this curious treatise by the Paduan Marco Antonio Olmo, which provides a medical as well as philosophical point of view on the true nature of beards and hair. It is an expanded version of a pamphlet that the author had published on these topics a few years earlier: the Opinio de fine medico barbae humanae, which appeared in Modena in 1599. The Bolognese edition of 1601 is dedicated to Pietro Aldobrandini and divided into three books. For this work, Olmo relied on sources from Antiquity, such as Crisippus and Diogenes, as well as later authorities, including Augustinus and Lactantius. The volume is illustrated with a woodcut depicting the correct proportions of the face and eyebrows necessary to not obstruct the viewing angle (fol. Y1r). The 1601 publication is recorded in only four Italian institutional libraries. A second, enlarged edition of the work was printed in 1603 by the same Bolognese printer. STC 17th century, 926; Bruni-Evans 3713; Krivatsy 8425. 8 A naumachia on the Mantua lake, for the Gonzaga-Savoy wedding 181 Follino, Federico (fl. 16th-17th century). Compendio delle sontuose feste fatte l’anno MDCVIII nella città di Mantova per le reali nozze del Serenissimo Principe D. Francesco Gonzaga con la Serenissima Infante Margherita di Savoia. Mantua, Aurelio and Lodovico Osanna, 1608. 4° (194x140 mm). Collation: [π]4, A-T4. [8], 149, [1] pages. Complete with fol. [π]4 blank, lacking the last blank T4. Roman and italic type. One engraved folding plate (Disegno della battaglia navale et del castello de fuochi trionfali fatti, 230x350 mm). Contemporary limp vellum, traces of ties. Spine with inked title. Bottom of spine and large portion of upper cover restored. A very good, unsophisticated copy. Book block partly detached from the upper cover, lacking the lower outer corner of the front flyleaf, marginal foxing in places, some stains to a few leaves. Loss to the lower outer blank corner of fols. H1 and H2. First edition of Follino’s Compendio, a precious account of the sontuose feste, the sumptuous festivities – including operas, balls, illuminations, tournaments, water festivities, and other extravagant forms of entertainment – celebrating the marriage of the crown prince Francesco II Gonzaga and Margherita, Princess of Savoy, in Mantua in May 1608. The formal wedding had been in Turin on 19 February, and the festivities started in Mantua on 24 May, when the bride made her triumphal entry into the city of her husband. The chaplain and court chronicler Federico Follino was responsible for the design and organization of those spectacular events, and dedicated his work, on 1 July 1608, to Margherita, the Gonzaga sister. The volume is supplemented with a fine engraved plate showing a naumachia, a mock naval battle and castle built on a platform in the middle of the Mantua lake, planned by the engineer and cartographer Daniele Bertazzolo. In this copy, a second engraving accompanying the text – and depicting a triumphal chariot (Dissegno del carro) – is lacking, as with most recorded copies. Follino’s Compendio contains, among other works, the full text of Arianna by Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621), set to music by the leading composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), then choirmaster of the Duke of Mantua; after the great success of his first opera Orfeo – dedicated to Francesco Gonzaga – in 1607, Monteverdi was commissioned to write music for the Gonzaga-Savoy marriage. The tragedy was performed on 28 May 1608 in the Sala degli Specchi in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. Rinuccini, invited from Florence, had written the libretto specifically for the occasion. The festival account describes in detail the staging of the opera, which lasted two and a half hours. The Arianna libretto was published as a separate text three times in the same year – 1608 – in Florence, Mantua, and Venice. 9 Alongside Rinuccini’s Arianna the Compendio presents the texts of other works performed during the Mantuan festivities and written by leading poets of the age: the Idropica (fols. I4v-N2r), a comedy by Battista Guarini (1538-1612), with the intermezzi by the poet from Savona Gabriello Chiabrera (1552-1638) and a musical prologue by Monteverdi; Il ballo delle ingrate (‘The Ballet of the Ungrateful Ladies’, fols. R1r-R3v), a semi-dramatic ballet written by Rinuccini and set to music by Monteverdi; and the Ifigenia (fols. S4r-T3) by the Mantuan Alessandro Striggio (1540-1592) – the librettist of Monteverdi’s Orfeo –, the presentation of which brought these spectacular celebrations to an end. This festival book is extremely rare on the market. Bruni-Evans 2188; Sartori, Libretti italiani a stampa, 5974; Watanabe-O’Kelly & Simon 463; G. Barboni Yans, “Teatro a Mantova all’inizio del Seicento. Le feste del 1608 descritte dal Follino. Contributo alla ricostituzione pratica del teatro di Corte”, A. Schnapper (ed.), La scenografia barocca, Bologna 1982, pp. 35-41; J. Gordon, “Entertainments for the marriages of the princesses of Savoy in 1608”, J. R. Mulryne - M. Shewring (eds.), Italian Renaissance festivals and their European influence, Lewiston 1992, pp. 119-140; B. Bujic, “Rinuccini the Craftsman: A View of his ‘L’Arianna’, Early Music History, 18 (1999), pp. 75-117 (esp. pp.78-79); A. Mignatti, Compendio delle sontuose feste, R. Brunelli (ed.), Vincenzo I Gonzaga 1562-1612. Il fasto del potere, Mantova 2012, pp. 159-162. A wedding account printed on blue paper 182 Rinuccini, Camillo (1564-1649). Descrizione delle Feste fatte nelle Reali nozze de’ Serenissimo Principi di Toscana D. Cosimo de’ Medici, e Maria Maddalena Archiduchessa d’Austria. Florence, Giunta, 1608. 4° (232x158 mm). PRINTED ON BLUE PAPER. Collation: [π]2, A-H4, I2, K-L4, M2, N-T4, V2. [4], 149 [i.e. 147, pp. 69-72 omitted], [1] pages. Complete with fol. M2 blank. Roman and italic type. Text partly printed in two columns. Woodcut coat of arms of the Medici and Habsburg families on the title-page. Fine woodcut compass rose on the recto of fol.