Knights, Wizards, and Evil Powers
GONZAGA, Curzio.
Il Fido amante, poema eroico. Mantua, [(colophon:) Giacomo Ruffinello, 1582].
Large 8vo, ff. [4], 217, [1]; with elaborate woodcut title, woodcut initials, head-, and tailpieces, printer’s device to last leaf; occasional very mild browning and damp-staining, but a very good, clean, crisp copy in later eighteenth-century stiff vellum, edges gilt, flat spine decorated in gilt, paper label; upper hinge cracked, edges slightly gnawed, gilding and label a little faded, top-edge dusty, small tears to spine subtly repaired.
First edition of Curzio Gonzaga’s captivating chivalric poem in thirty-six cantos, much appreciated by his friend Tasso and published the year after the first authorised edition of the Gerusalemme liberata.
Composed to celebrate the house of Gonzaga, the 34,000-verse Fido amante (or Fidamante), later reprinted in 1591, ‘sings the deeds and trials of the brave knight Gonzago (born mortal but raised under the loving care of a god) in his attempts to deserve the favour of his beloved Ippolita-Vittoria … [In a tradition championed not long before by Ariosto,] the quest is entwined with supernatural events, wizards, and evil powers’ (DBI, trans.).
BM STC Italian, p. 308; EDIT16 CNCE 21437; USTC 833697; Adams G 856; Olschki, Choix 18508.