FERRARI, Giovanni Francesco.
Le rime burlesche, sopra varii, et piacevoli soggetti; indrizzate à diversi nobili signori.
Venice, heirs of Melchior Sessa, 1570.
8vo, pp. [iv], 122, [4 (blank)]; engraved printer’s device on title, four-line white-on-black woodcut initials throughout; wholly printed in italics, running title; a clean, very attractive, genuine and unsophisticated copy in contemporary vellum, remains of ties, a few chips; small ink stamp to the title.
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Le rime burlesche, sopra varii, et piacevoli soggetti; indrizzate à diversi nobili signori.
First edition, rare, of the only work published by Giovanni Francesco Ferrari, a Renaissance court poet of whom little is known. Most information is gleaned, or will be gleaned in the future, from these verses; for example, his attachment to the entourage of the Mantuan prelate Ippolito Capilupi during his time in Rome is evidenced within the text, and multiples references to Roman life in the late Renaissance are to be found in these lines. Ferrari also edited or endorsed a propaganda pamphlet written by Capilupi’s nephew about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre.
Among Ferrari’s ‘burle’ are a laudatory poem to ignorance, paradoxes, social observations and satire, with interesting combined use of multiple dialects as well as languages and reliance on sources such as Ariosto, Pulci, Folengo.
Rare: in Britain, held only at the BL and Oxford. In North America, at Van Pelt, Newberry, Arizona and Toronto.
