In Longstitch Carta Rustica
SORBOLI, Girolamo.
Celestina, favola pastorale. Ferrara, Vittorio Baldini, 1586.
8vo, pp. 128; with large woodcut vignette to title, woodcut ornaments and initials throughout; an excellent copy, sewn longstitch into (?contemporary) carta rustica wrappers; spine lightly worn with chips at either end, upper joint partially split; early sixteenth-century ownership inscription ‘Di Horatio Albano d’Urbino’ to inner wrapper, manuscript shelfmarks to title (‘X V. 70’) and title verso (‘X V. 74').
First and only edition, rare, of this verse play by the physician and philosopher Girolamo Sorboli, a remarkably fresh, unsophisticated copy in a contemporary longstitch binding.
Girolamo Sorboli (c. 1550–1591) studied medicine and philosophy and, while practising as a physician in Romagna, published widely: a discourse on the plague of 1575–’7 was followed by a dialogue on the Great Comet of 1577, a work of Platonic philosophy sopra la definitione d’amore, and, among much occasional verse, an Orazione on the election of Sixtus V and a Canzone for Gregory XIII. In 1586 he published both this pastoral Celestina and a tragedy, Camaldo.
Provenance:
Inscribed by Orazio Albani (1576–1653), ambassador of Urbino to Urban VIII.
EDIT16 30133 (noting two variants). OCLC finds only four copies outside Italy, of which two in the UK (BL and CUL) and one in the US (Yale).