LETTERS TO A FEMALE ARCADIAN
[TODESCHI, Claudio.]
Lettere filosofiche dirette alla nobil donna la signora baronessa Laura Astalli Piccolomini sotto il nome di Clori.
Rome, Giovanni Zempel, 1783.
4to, pp. 31, [1]; handsome engraved allegorical frontispiece by J. Cassini, engraved vignette to title, engraved tail-pieces; very good, crisp and clean in 20th-century brown wrappers, sticker to upper cover; chipped at fore-edge, short tear at head of spine; ink stamp of P. Papa to blank recto of frontispiece; manuscript correction to p. 7 (possibly authorial).
Added to your basket:
Lettere filosofiche dirette alla nobil donna la signora baronessa Laura Astalli Piccolomini sotto il nome di Clori.
Extremely rare first edition of these four verse letters by Claudio Todeschi (b. 1737) addressed to baroness Laura Astalli Piccolomini, his fellow member of the Accademia degli Arcadi. Known as 'Clori', Laura was a soprano and one of the last surviving members of the noble Roman family the Astallis; she married Pietro Testa Silveri Piccolomini, 8th Baron of Balsorano, in 1765. Founded in 1690, the Accademia degli Arcadi was the first Italian academy to admit women.
An energetic member of the Accademia, Todeschi wrote on philosophical, economic and political matters as well as penning verse. Written under his Arcadian name 'Rosmiro Cellenio', these Lettere take as their subjects human anatomy, the human spirit, light, and astronomy.
We have only been able to trace one copy, at the Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III in Naples. Another issue, also known in a single copy, was printed by Zempel in the same year, without the frontispiece and with the Arcadian name of the author on the title.
