PROVINCIAL PRINTING IN PIEDMONT
TERENCE.
Comediae sex. A M. Anto. Mureto locis prope innumeris suo nitore restitutae …
Carmagnola, Marcantonio Bellone, 1590.
8vo, pp. 332, [4]; woodcut printer’s device to title, title within typographical border, woodcut initials, woodcut and typographical head- and tailpieces, variant woodcut printer’s device to verso of colophon leaf, full-page woodcut of the Virgin and Child to final leaf, a few deckle edges; title-page with show-through from inscription on verso, a few marginal ink stains and signs of use, light dampstain to second half of book, heavier towards end, otherwise a good copy; bound in contemporary limp vellum; binding cockled and slightly soiled, tear to lower cover, head of spine defective; manuscript notes to upper cover including the name Joannes, seventeenth-century ownership inscription on title-page (crossed through), note on front flyleaf ‘Viscardi in Andria’ (relating to the play?), late-seventeenth-century ownership inscriptions of Melchior Genna, one stating that he obtained the book from Giov[anni] Bartolomeo Galeano to verso of title, the others to B4v and M6r, a few doodles to D4v–5r, final verso with ink drawing of the Virgin and Child tracing the woodcut on the recto of the same leaf.
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Comediae sex. A M. Anto. Mureto locis prope innumeris suo nitore restitutae …
A rare provincial printing of a school edition the plays of Terence, printed in the small town of Carmagnola in Piedmont, which had become part of the Duchy of Savoy only two years earlier, after almost half a century under French domination. The text is taken from earlier printings of Marc Antoine Muret’s version, originally commissioned by Paolo Manuzio in the 1550s and regularly reprinted thereafter.
The printer, Marcantonio Bellone (1572–1621), was active in Genoa and Turin, before settling in Carmagnola from 1584 until his death. His output was typical of a provincial printer, encompassing local regulations, ecclesiastical and religious tracts, reprints, schoolbooks (as here), and works printed on commission for local authors.
No copies found in OCLC or Library Hub, although we locate a copy at Ohio State University (digitised).
EDIT16 CNCE 32171; USTC 858821.
