[MARABOTTA, Cattaneo.]
Vita della serafica S. Caterina da Genova.
Genoa, Tipografia Frugoni, 1832.
Small 4to, pp. vi, 214, [2 (blank)], xxix, [1 (blank)]; woodcut vignette to title; one or two leaves with browning, but a very good, crisp copy; in attractive contemporary tree-patterned sheep, borders roll-tooled in gilt, spine gilt in compartments, gilt red paper lettering-piece, marbled endpapers; small scuff to corner of upper board; nineteenth-century engraved bookplate with ‘CM’ monogram and coronet, ‘Fr. de Maistre’ in pencil to front flyleaf.
Rare first edition thus, an attractive nineteenth-century reprint of Marabotta’s biography of Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), first published in 1737, the date of her canonisation. Catherine was known for her writings on mysticism and for her work with the poor and sick, notably during the late fifteenth-century plagues in Genoa.
OCLC notes copies at Lucerne and Johns Hopkins University only; ICCU locates two copies, both in Genoa.
