LACTANTIUS, Lucius Coelius Firmianus.
Opera
Rome, Conradus Sweynheim and Arnoldus Pannartz, Rome: 1468
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Vccelliera ouero discorso della natura, e proprieta di diuersi vccelli, e in particolare di que’ che cantano. Con il modo di prendergli, conoscergli, alleuargli, e mantenergli. E con le figure cauate dal vero, e diligentemente intagliate dal Tempesta, e dal Villamena. Opera di Gio. Pietro Olina novarese e dottore di legge. Dedicata al Sig. Cavalier dal Pozzo.
OLINA, Giovanni Pietro. I promessi sposi, storia milanese del secolo XVII scoperta e rifatta da Alessandro Manzoni.
MANZONI, Alessandro Three volumes, octavo (205 x 120 mm.); I: [2] leaves, 352 pages; II: [2] leaves, 368 pages; III: [2] leaves, 416 pagine, plus the errata leaf. Some foxing and browning due to paper quality, a couple of spots but a very fine copy in contemporary half calf, spine in compartments with gilt and blind decorations.First edition of the most famous novel in Italian literature. Manzoni started work on the novel in 1821 after reading a 1627 Italian edict that specified penalties for any priest who refused to perform a marriage when requested to do so. On 17 September 1823 the first version of the novel was ultimated under the title of Fermo e Lucia ( published only in 1915 by Giuseppe Lesca with the title of Gli sposi promessi). Manzoni then heavily revised it, finishing by the end of August 1825; it was published on 15 June 1827, after two years of corrections and proof-checking. Manzoni's chosen title, Gli sposi promessi, was changed for the sake of euphony shortly before its final commitment to printing. Of this first edition, 1,000 copies were printed by the publisher Vincenzo Ferrario as confirmed by a letter Manzoni sent to Giacomo Beccaria in December 1839: «Della prima edizione posso credere che siano state fatte quaranta edizioni, delle quali una da me, di mille esemplari; le altre posso credere che abbian sommato a 59.000 in numero; il che vuol dire ch'io non ho avuto che la sessantesima parte dei compratori.» The book immediately become a hit in Italy and Europe with more than 80 reprints and caught not only the attention of publishers and printers but also the praises of many illustrious writers of the time such as Mary Shelley, Walter Scott, George Eliot and Charles Dickens. ?In the 1830s and 1840s no one who was interested in Italian culture could have overlooked the extraordinary significance of this novel, let alone a novelist like Dickens [In a letter to Samuel Rogers written in Genoa and dated 1September 1844, Dickens describes his encounter with the novel in a rather enthusiastic fashion: A little, patient, revolutionary officer, exiled in England during many years; comes to and fro three times a week, to read and speak Italian with me. A poor little lame butterfly of a man, fluttering alittle bit at one time, and hopping a little bit at another, and getting through life at some disadvantage, or other, always. If I question him closely on some idiom which he is not in a condition to explain, he usually shakes his head dolefully, and begins to cry. Butthis is not what I meant to say just now, when I began to allude to him. He has initiated me in the Promessi Sposi? And what a clever book it is! I have not proceeded far into the story, but I am quite charmed with it. The interviews between the Bridegroom and the Priest, on the Morning of the disappointment ? and between the Bridegroom and the Bride,and her Mother ? and the description of poor Renzo's walk to the house of the learned doctor; with the fowls ? and the scene between them ? and the whole idea of the character and story of Padre Christoforo [sic] are touched, I think by a most delicate and charming hand. I have just left the good father in Don Rodrigo's boisterous Eating Hall; and am in no little anxiety. I assure you. ](Letters 4: 189) Besides I promessi sposi soon became very popular all over Europe: the first edition ? to be revised in 1840 ? was published in 1827, and the next year two French translations appeared, to be followed by others in the 1830s and 1840s. Charles Swan's The Betrothed, the first English translation, was published in 1828 and was followed in 1834 by Featherstonhaugh's version and by another anonymous one in 1844. Soon the novel became a favourite with intellectuals and writers such as Auguste Comte, Chateaubriand, and Victor Hugo. E. A. Poe enthusiastically reviewed it for the Southern Literary Messenger (1835), while the North American Review devoted a long essay to the novel in 1840. Walter Scott himself, who also express La Diuina Comedia di Dante, di nuouo alla sua vera lettione ridotta con lo aiuto di molti antichissimi esemplari. Con argomenti, et allegorie per ciascun canto, & apostille nel margine. Et indice copiosissimo di tutti i vocaboli piu importanti vsati dal poeta, con la spositione loro.
ALIGHIERI, Dante. Historia del concilio tridentino di Pietro Soave Polano. Nella quale si scoprono tutti gl?artificii della Corte di Roma, per impedire che né la verità di dogmi si palesasse, né la riforma del Papato, et della Chiesa si trattasse
SARPI, Paolo Folio (315 x 205 mm.), [8], 806, [10] pages, woodcut Royal arms on title, woodcut decorated initials. Contemprary oak boarded black fishskin gilt, spine in compartments with gilt tile, blue edges. A few spots, light foxing, joints cracking but a very fine copy on large paper from the libraries of the Venetian merchant Amadeus Svajer (ex libris) and Lord Amherst of Hackney (ex libris). Large paper copies of the first edition are very rare. First edition of this pivotal work of Modern historiography, containing a lucid and accurate reconstruction of the history of the Council of Trent. The Tridentine Council (1545-1563), which proved decisive in laying the bases for the Catholic Counter Reformation, was considered by Sarpi the most relevant event of his recent past and the event mainly responsible for the political situation of his years. Precisely in light of the dramatic consequences that it had on contemporary politics and ideologies, it was epically defined by the author as the ?Iliade del secol nostro? (?Iliad of our century?). The Historia is articulated in eight books, without any further subdivision in chapters or paragraphs, encompassing both the history of the Council and of its preparatory phases in an annalistic form. Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623) was a Venetian ecclesiastic, a diplomat and a state theologian of the Republic of Venice, and a polygraph. During Venice?s struggle with Pope Paul V (1605-1621), which cost the city a papal interdict, Sarpi wrote powerfully in support of the Venetian case, arguing that the Pope was infallible only in matters of faith. Sarpi?s basic tenet was that ?princes have their authority from God, and are accountable to none but him for the government of their people.? With his work, Sarpi hoped to assume an authoritative position in the European debate questioning the religious and political primacy of the Pope; in so doing, he proved to be one of the earliest advocates in Italy of the separation of church and state and, overall, a forerunner of Modern European thought. Written in Italian for an European public, the work was dedicated to James I Stuart, King of England. As a work of polemic against the outcomes of the Council, which strongly reasserted the Pope?s primacy over the Christian Church, Sarpi?s Historia was anonymously published in London under the pseudonym of Pietro Soave Polano (that is, the anagram of Paolo Sarpi Veneto), and was immediately put on the Index by the Roman Church. The manuscript was smuggled out of Italy with the help of the British Embassy and was soon translated into Latin, English and French; notwithstanding the early condemnation, the work was widely read for at least the next two centuries. Notwithstanding his anti-papal stance, Sarpi proves to be an attentive and reliable chronicler, carefully redacting his Historia after contemporary documentary information. In a patent contrast with the Italian production of his time, he intentionally adopted an anti-literary, but easy-understandable style, preferring a plain and rigorous syntax to the richly elaborated Baroque period style of writing.STC 21760; ESTC, S116701; Gamba 2080; PMM 118. Il Roccolo ditirambo di Valeriano Acanti Acc. Olimpico Vicentino.
ACANTI, Aureliano (CANATI, Valeriano). Quarto (255 x 190 mm.), xxiv, 67 pages with allegorical vignette on title page, two more vignette in the text and a folding table, all engraved by Cunego. Two small defects on spine but a very good copy in ontemporary boards with manuscript title on spine. First edition of the earliest account of wines from the Veneto region, containing the first mention of Prosecco. One of the most important and rare works on the history of Italian wine, Il Roccolo ditirambo disguises itself as a dithyrambic poem in honour of Dionysus to sing the praises of Venetian enology. The work is dedicated to Count Gelio Ghellini, patriarch of one of the most powerful families of Vicenza, on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter Elena to Count Simandio Chiericati and it is illustrated with a a fold-out engraving of a pastoral scene including vineyard plantations from count Ghellini's villa, as well as two small bucolic scenes at the beginning and end of the poem, engraved by Domenico Cunego from Verona.Publishing under the pseudonym and anagram Aureliano Acanti, the author Valeriano Canati (1706 - 1787) was an Italian priest of the Theatines order, as well as a poet, member of the Venetian Accademia Olimpica. Lyrically, Canati recounts the emergence of ?the son of Bacchus' from a subterranean cloister and his discovery of the idealistic rural scenery he encounters. Soon enough he encounters vineyards and plunges into a passionate and playful discovery of different wines, producing vivid descriptions of their colour, flavour, fullness as well as their effects on the drinker. Of note is the mention of Prosecco as a sweet and cloudy, but pure and healthy wine: ?Con quel melaromatico Prosecco.//Di Monteberico questo perfetto//Prosecco eletto ci dà lo splendido//Nostro Canonico. Io lo conosco//Egli è un po' fosco, e sembra torbido;//Ma pur è un balsamo sì puro e sano' (p.29). Il Roccolo ditirambo is a fascinating work, both as a commemoration of late eighteenth century Italian enology and a historical record of colossal academic value.Extremely rare, only four copies have been auctioned in the past twenty-five years, and WorldCat records only three copies: The British Library, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, and Biblioteca intercomunale di Fiera di Primiero. Three facsimiles have been published, in 1971 by the Accademia italiana della cucina, Milan, in 2003 by Provincia di Vicenza, and in 2011 under ?La modernità del pensiero vitivinicolo di Aureliano Acanti nel Roccolo ditirambo (1754)? by Antonio Calò and Angelo Costacurta (Biblioteca La Vigna, Vicenza). Morazzoni 211. 