Beschreibung:

Nascita, Vita, et Progressi, dell’Em[inentissi]mo Cardinal Mazzarino […] , in Italian, manuscript on paper [Italy, late 17th century] A near-contemporary biography of the Italian cardinal, diplomat and politician Cardinal Giulio Mazarin (1602-1661), who served as chief minister to Kings Louis XIII and XIV from 1642 until his death, including copies of some of his letters and of his last will and testament. 298 x 210mm. 62 leaves (6 loose gatherings of 10 leaves and a bifolium), complete, 19 lines of text, catchwords survive, the watermark matching Gravell 7180, dated 1652, impressed heraldic stamp with a lion rampant holding a sword on a bendy of 8 sinister on ff.1, 16 and 17 (some marginal staining and thumbing). Paper covers with manuscript title on upper cover (stained, edges frayed). Provenance : The paper is from 1652, and the text is written in an elegant late 17th- or early 18th-century Italian secretarial hand. Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, and this text survives in a number of late 17th-century copies now in European libraries (among which Oxford, Queen’s College MS 364; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Baluze 10487; Rome, Biblioteca nazionale centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Ges.158 ff.69-110 and Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek Mscr.Dresd.F.78). Content : Nascita, Vita, et Progressi dell’Em[inentissi]mo Cardinal Mazzarino , beginning ‘Sono li cenni di Gran Personaggi’ and ending ‘[...] ma in tutto il mondo, non si vedrano’, ff.1-52v; copies of letters written by Cardinal Mazarin to Pope Alexander VII, Cardinal Colonna, Paolo Maccarani, and a letter from the Biship of Friuli to Paolo Maccarani on the death of Cardinal Mazarin, ff.53-57v; copy of Mazarin’s last will and testament ff.58-61v.