RULERS OF THE RENAISSANCE
SIMEONI, Gabriele.
Comentarii di Gabriello Symeoni Fiorentino sopra alla tetrarchia di Vinegia, di Milano, di Mantova, et di Ferrara ...
Venice, Comino da Trino di Monferrato, 1546.
8vo, ff. [4], 110, [18]; italic letter, printed marginalia, portrait vignette of Simeoni to title-page within an oval frame decorated with the heads of putti, woodcut historiated initials throughout, 3 full-page woodcut diagrams; occasional dampstaining and finger-soiling, title-page soiled with chips to corners; late nineteenth-century blue-grey marbled boards, paper title-piece adhered to spine, ‘Petrarchia’ (sic) lettered to lower edge in ink; light wear to joints.
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Comentarii di Gabriello Symeoni Fiorentino sopra alla tetrarchia di Vinegia, di Milano, di Mantova, et di Ferrara ...
Scarce first edition of Gabriele Simeoni’s (1509–1575) political history of the most powerful city-states of sixteenth-century Italy – Venice, Milan, Mantua, and Ferrara – with full-page genealogical diagrams of the Visconti, Gonzaga, and d’Este families.
Simeoni’s highly detailed account, which traces the history of each city from its origin to 1545, focuses in particular on questions of succession and is supplemented by excerpts from letters, epitaphs, and speeches. Sent to France in 1528 as an attaché to the Pope’s envoy, Simeoni travelled to various Italian courts upon his return to Italy, simultaneously pursing his interests as a poet, translator, astrologer, and writer of emblem books.
The history of Florence, Simeoni’s birthplace, is notably absent from the Comentarii, perhaps due to difficulties in obtaining patronage: he left Florence for Venice in 1546 having tried unsuccessfully to obtain the sum of one hundred ducats needed for the publication of the work from Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga and Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Three of the five books address the history of Venice, in recognition of funds eventually supplied by Doge Francesco Donato, to whom the book is dedicated.
Rare outside of Italy. OCLC and Library Hub find only 3 copies in the UK, at the British Library, Cambridge, and Oxford. Adams S1158; BM STC Italian 629; EDIT16 24589; USTC 856446. See Paoli, La dedica (2009); Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (1999).
