[BALDELLI, Giovanni Battista].
Elogio di Niccolò Machiavelli.
Londra, 1794.
8vo, pp. 116; occasional spotting aside, clean and crisp throughout; in contemporary vellum-backed carta rustica; light wear to upper cover, but a very good, wide-margined copy.
Uncommon first edition of this speech in praise of Machiavelli, given to the Reale Accademia Fiorentina on 7 August 1794 by the Florentine soldier, politician, and historian Giovanni Battista Baldelli Boni (1766–1831).
Baldelli was an opponent both of Napoleonic and of Austrian involvement in Italy, having been a supporter of the ancien régime. His speech on Machiavelli was prompted by the inauguration in the church of Santa Croce of Machiavelli’s funerary monument a few years previously, amidst a revival of interest in the philosopher, and it attempts to provide a moderate liberal defence of Machiavelli’s thought. The Italian revolutionary Ugo Foscolo called Baldelli ‘L’unico che abbia degnamente parlato di sì grand’uomo’.
OCLC records copies in North America, at Newberry, Chicago, Texas, Alberta, UC San Diego, and Kansas.
