Details
Capitoli: Canzone: Strambocti & Sonetti nuovamente stampati per la venuta delle Palle. [Florence: Zanobi della Barba?, after 16 September 1512].
8° (136 x 93 mm). Collation: a4 (a1r title, large woodcut of the Medici arms, a1v text). 4 leaves. Roman type. Woodcut arms within white-on-black ornamental border on a1r. (Outer blank margins repaired, tiny perforation to last leaf.) 19th-century aubergine morocco, upper cover with gilt crest of Roberto Ridolfi, spine lettered in gilt, turn-ins gilt (light wear to corners and extremities of spine).
Provenance: Marchese Roberto Ridolfi, bookplate and supralibros.
FIRST EDITION, OF THE GREATEST RARITY, of a short collection of anonymous verses celebrating the return of the Medicis to Florence. Following the brief and frivolous rule of Lorenzo de' Medici's eldest son Pietro in 1492-94, the Florentine populace, tired of their merchant rulers, re-established a republican government under the protection of the French. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512, which resulted in the defeat of the French troops by the Spanish, the Medicean oligarchy was reinstated. These brief popular verses celebrate this event in six poems, one in terza rima, two Canzone della palle (referring to the 5 balls of the Medici crest), two sonnets, and a "strambotto" in ottava rima.
The present copy, from the library of Roberto Ridolfi, appears to be THE ONLY SURVIVING COPY of this anonymously printed edition. The attribution to Zanobi della Barba, printer of popular verse, plays and short pamphlets, most undated, in the decade between 1510 and 1520, is based on the appearance of the same woodcut and identical roman types in a similar 4-leaf edition of canzone on the same theme; this is known in a unique but imperfect copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence in which Zanobi della Barba is identified as the printer. Two other editions of canzone with similar but not identical contents, both by Zanobi della Barba, are known; these two also apparently survive in single copies, both in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library, and both are described by Sander (7011 and Add. 87). Ridolfi described and compared the contents of the four editions in detail in an article published in 1949 in La Bibliofilia; he left open the exact sequence of editions but dated all of them to the period following the decree returning the Medicis to power on 16 September 1512 and preceding the election of Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici as Pope Leo X on 11 March 1513.
R. Ridolfi, "Stampe populari per il ritorno de' Medici in Firenze l'anno 1512", La Bibliofilia, LI, 1949, pp. 28-36.
8° (136 x 93 mm). Collation: a4 (a1r title, large woodcut of the Medici arms, a1v text). 4 leaves. Roman type. Woodcut arms within white-on-black ornamental border on a1r. (Outer blank margins repaired, tiny perforation to last leaf.) 19th-century aubergine morocco, upper cover with gilt crest of Roberto Ridolfi, spine lettered in gilt, turn-ins gilt (light wear to corners and extremities of spine).
Provenance: Marchese Roberto Ridolfi, bookplate and supralibros.
FIRST EDITION, OF THE GREATEST RARITY, of a short collection of anonymous verses celebrating the return of the Medicis to Florence. Following the brief and frivolous rule of Lorenzo de' Medici's eldest son Pietro in 1492-94, the Florentine populace, tired of their merchant rulers, re-established a republican government under the protection of the French. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512, which resulted in the defeat of the French troops by the Spanish, the Medicean oligarchy was reinstated. These brief popular verses celebrate this event in six poems, one in terza rima, two Canzone della palle (referring to the 5 balls of the Medici crest), two sonnets, and a "strambotto" in ottava rima.
The present copy, from the library of Roberto Ridolfi, appears to be THE ONLY SURVIVING COPY of this anonymously printed edition. The attribution to Zanobi della Barba, printer of popular verse, plays and short pamphlets, most undated, in the decade between 1510 and 1520, is based on the appearance of the same woodcut and identical roman types in a similar 4-leaf edition of canzone on the same theme; this is known in a unique but imperfect copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence in which Zanobi della Barba is identified as the printer. Two other editions of canzone with similar but not identical contents, both by Zanobi della Barba, are known; these two also apparently survive in single copies, both in the Spencer Collection at the New York Public Library, and both are described by Sander (7011 and Add. 87). Ridolfi described and compared the contents of the four editions in detail in an article published in 1949 in La Bibliofilia; he left open the exact sequence of editions but dated all of them to the period following the decree returning the Medicis to power on 16 September 1512 and preceding the election of Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici as Pope Leo X on 11 March 1513.
R. Ridolfi, "Stampe populari per il ritorno de' Medici in Firenze l'anno 1512", La Bibliofilia, LI, 1949, pp. 28-36.