Details
FORESI, Bastiano (1424-88). Libro chiamato Ambitione. - VERGILIUS MARO. Georgica, in Italian. Translated from the Latin by Bastiano Foresi. [Florence: Antonio di Bartolommeo Miscomini, ca. 1481-84 or 1489-91].
Chancery 4° (200 x 135 mm). Collation: a4 b-l8 m6 (a1 blank, a2r table, a4v blank, b1r text, Ambitione, d6v la giorgica di Virgilio, m6 blank). 88 leaves (of 90, without the first and final blanks). 24 lines. Type 112 R. Initial spaces with guide letters. (Lower blank margins of first leaf renewed, occasional staining from washing of marginalia, small tear in gutter of k3-5, e3-4 bound in reverse.) Modern red morocco gilt, gilt edges.
Provenance: a few early marginalia (most washed); inkstamp on a2 of a serpent entwined around a tree; Prince Piero Ginori Conti, bookplate.
FIRST EDITION of this eclogue of nine capitoli in terza rima, dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, and intended, the author declares at the outset, as an exposition of a Virgilian philosophy of pastoral virtue. The poem consists of a dialogue between an itinerant narrator and an allegorical figure named Ambitione, who tries to persuade the narrator to remain in Florence and to join in the political life of the city, by recounting its history and praising its fame and its beauties (chapter III). The narrator, forewarned by Virgil against the schemes of the wily Ambitione, declines and decides to devote himself to agriculture, whose rules he begins to spell out, leading directly into Foresi's free translation or paraphrase of the Georgica.
Sebastiano Foresi, Florentine notary and close friend of Marsilio Ficino, is not known to have composed any other works. The printer Antonio Miscomini, known simply as Antonio di Bartolommeo during his earlier activity in Venice (in 1476-78), dated and signed his Florentine editions erratically. He is attested as printing in Florence during 1481-82, then intermittently until 1484, again in 1489 (after a period in Modena), and from 1491 until 1494 or 1495 (BMC). The type employed for this book he used throughout his career, although in modified form after early 1492. While GW assigns this edition to 1481-84 or 1489-91, BMC suggests that, judging from the number of lines and the width of the type page, the book must have been among the earlier works of Miscomini's Florentine press. On 28 February 28 1481/2, Miscomini signed and dated an edition of Virgil's Bucolica in the Italian translation by Bernardo Pulci.
HCR 7231; BMC VI, 644 (IA. 27232); GW 10173; IGI 4015; Pellechet 4865; Goff F-243.
Chancery 4° (200 x 135 mm). Collation: a4 b-l8 m6 (a1 blank, a2r table, a4v blank, b1r text, Ambitione, d6v la giorgica di Virgilio, m6 blank). 88 leaves (of 90, without the first and final blanks). 24 lines. Type 112 R. Initial spaces with guide letters. (Lower blank margins of first leaf renewed, occasional staining from washing of marginalia, small tear in gutter of k3-5, e3-4 bound in reverse.) Modern red morocco gilt, gilt edges.
Provenance: a few early marginalia (most washed); inkstamp on a2 of a serpent entwined around a tree; Prince Piero Ginori Conti, bookplate.
FIRST EDITION of this eclogue of nine capitoli in terza rima, dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, and intended, the author declares at the outset, as an exposition of a Virgilian philosophy of pastoral virtue. The poem consists of a dialogue between an itinerant narrator and an allegorical figure named Ambitione, who tries to persuade the narrator to remain in Florence and to join in the political life of the city, by recounting its history and praising its fame and its beauties (chapter III). The narrator, forewarned by Virgil against the schemes of the wily Ambitione, declines and decides to devote himself to agriculture, whose rules he begins to spell out, leading directly into Foresi's free translation or paraphrase of the Georgica.
Sebastiano Foresi, Florentine notary and close friend of Marsilio Ficino, is not known to have composed any other works. The printer Antonio Miscomini, known simply as Antonio di Bartolommeo during his earlier activity in Venice (in 1476-78), dated and signed his Florentine editions erratically. He is attested as printing in Florence during 1481-82, then intermittently until 1484, again in 1489 (after a period in Modena), and from 1491 until 1494 or 1495 (BMC). The type employed for this book he used throughout his career, although in modified form after early 1492. While GW assigns this edition to 1481-84 or 1489-91, BMC suggests that, judging from the number of lines and the width of the type page, the book must have been among the earlier works of Miscomini's Florentine press. On 28 February 28 1481/2, Miscomini signed and dated an edition of Virgil's Bucolica in the Italian translation by Bernardo Pulci.
HCR 7231; BMC VI, 644 (IA. 27232); GW 10173; IGI 4015; Pellechet 4865; Goff F-243.