UNRECORDED NUPTIALIA
MOLAJONI, Bartolomeo.
Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto dedicato al merito sublime di S. E. il Signor Cav. Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia, sotto prefetto del viterbese circondario.
Viterbo, brothers Poggiarelli, 1811.
Folio bifolium (267 x 193 mm), pp. [2]; printed in various types on one side of sheet only, woodcut initial, printer’s inked hair-mark, press-pin holes at centre-fold, watermark of bird upon three hills; some very light foxing, a few small ink marks, short closed paperflaw to lower left margin.
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Alla neogama donzella Marianna Molajoni negli Sforza, Bartolomeo Molajoni germano dirigge il seguente sonetto dedicato al merito sublime di S. E. il Signor Cav. Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia, sotto prefetto del viterbese circondario.
Seemingly unrecorded sonnet addressed to the newlywed Marianna Molajoni by her brother Bartolomeo and dedicated to the sottoprefetto of Viterbo, Giulio Zelli Pazzaglia.
The sonnet uses – rather unsubtly – the classical imagery of the elm and the vine as a symbol of marriage, as in Ovid, Methamorphoses XIV: an elm (the husband) acts as the support to a vine (his wife) as she is nourished by the sun (love) and offers its fruit to a farmer (the god of marriage Hymen). The poet concludes by advising his sister to leave ‘her blushing’ to the sunset because, after her ‘sacrifice’, she will not regret having ‘donated her flower’ (trans.).
Provincially printed in Viterbo during the Napoleonic occupation, the sonnet appears in an unusual format, printed from a single forme on one side of a sheet and folded to leave the title-page on the verso and the text recto. Though elegantly printed with ornamental types, it shows evidence of somewhat crude printing: an inked hair appears on the second page, the ‘I’ in ‘Zelli’ has been partly lost to a piece of grit in the press, and the ‘I’ in ‘Pazzaglia’ appears to have been added as an afterthought.
No copies traced on OCLC or ICCU.
