Details
PETRARCA, Francesco (1303-74). Epistolae familiares. Edited by Sebastianus Manilius. Venice: Joannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, 13 September 1492.
Median 4° (220 x 159 mm). Collation: π6 a-o8 p6 (π1r title, π1v editor's dedicatory prologue, π2v index, a1r text, p5v colophon and register, p6r full-page woodcut printer's device, p6v blank). 124 leaves, a2-p5 numbered 2-117. 39 lines and headline, shoulder notes. Type 23:82R.. 12-, 11- and 8-line initial spaces with guide letters. (Small repair to title-leaf affecting 4 letters on verso, mostly marginal staining and soiling.) Contemporary German quarter blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards, vellum manuscript spine liners, remains of lower brass catch (edge of upper board restored, an "A" carved into upper cover, rubbed, lacking clasps).
Provenance: copious early marginalia in several hands including one very fine small cursive hand; several inscriptions on front and back flyleaves; device leaf with long inscription in German (a poem?) dated 1537; "Ex libris Johannis Lutz Monasterio Mainfeldii pastoris Walhusani Dalbergenorum SS. Theologiae Baccalaurei ... Anno 1633", inscription on title page.
FIRST EDITION, the only separately published incunable edition of Petrarch's letters. Like Petrarch's Latin philosophical writings, his letters, in their intimate and confessional tone make up as a whole an immense journal intime, the Familiares being more than the other collections revelatory of his domestic life and the details of his daily existence. They constitute an "interpretative key to the Canzionere, for each explores, more or less systematically, one or other of Petrarch's concerns in the vernacular poems..." (Brand and Pertile, Cambridge History of Italian Literature [1966], p. 107).
HC *12811; BMC V, 342 (IA. 21036); CIBN P-152; IGI 7569; Goff P-399.
Median 4° (220 x 159 mm). Collation: π6 a-o8 p6 (π1r title, π1v editor's dedicatory prologue, π2v index, a1r text, p5v colophon and register, p6r full-page woodcut printer's device, p6v blank). 124 leaves, a2-p5 numbered 2-117. 39 lines and headline, shoulder notes. Type 23:82R.. 12-, 11- and 8-line initial spaces with guide letters. (Small repair to title-leaf affecting 4 letters on verso, mostly marginal staining and soiling.) Contemporary German quarter blind-tooled pigskin over wooden boards, vellum manuscript spine liners, remains of lower brass catch (edge of upper board restored, an "A" carved into upper cover, rubbed, lacking clasps).
Provenance: copious early marginalia in several hands including one very fine small cursive hand; several inscriptions on front and back flyleaves; device leaf with long inscription in German (a poem?) dated 1537; "Ex libris Johannis Lutz Monasterio Mainfeldii pastoris Walhusani Dalbergenorum SS. Theologiae Baccalaurei ... Anno 1633", inscription on title page.
FIRST EDITION, the only separately published incunable edition of Petrarch's letters. Like Petrarch's Latin philosophical writings, his letters, in their intimate and confessional tone make up as a whole an immense journal intime, the Familiares being more than the other collections revelatory of his domestic life and the details of his daily existence. They constitute an "interpretative key to the Canzionere, for each explores, more or less systematically, one or other of Petrarch's concerns in the vernacular poems..." (Brand and Pertile, Cambridge History of Italian Literature [1966], p. 107).
HC *12811; BMC V, 342 (IA. 21036); CIBN P-152; IGI 7569; Goff P-399.