Beschreibung:

PETRARCA, Francesco (1304-1374). Il Petrarca . [Venice: heirs of Aldus and Andrea d'Asolano, June 1533]. 8° (151 x 84mm). Woodcut dolphin-and-anchor device on title, repeated on final page. (Fore-margin of title repaired and strengthened, short tear in r5 very slightly affecting text.) Red straight-grained morocco gilt by Bozerian jeune, sides with border of roll-tooled interlinked circles framed by double fillets, spine with pointillé decoration, Greek-key roll on turn-ins, blue watered silk endpapers, gilt edges. Provenance : Sir Charles James Stuart, Bart. (armorial bookplate); Wilfred Merton (booklabel). Fourth Aldine edition of Petrarch, preceded by those of 1501, 1514 and 1521. This one, dedicated by the twenty-one year old Paolo Manuzio to the marchese D'Oria (who later became a Protestant), is one of the first books to be printed by the re-opened Aldine Press, following the death of Andrea d'Asolano in 1529. Adams P-802; Renouard 108:5. PETRARCA, Francesco. Secreto...in dialogi di latino in vulgar & in lingua toscha tradocto . Venice: Nicolò Zoppino and Vincenzo di Paolo, 9 March 1520. 8° (149 x 100mm). Title in red and black and with a large woodcut by Zoan Andrea depicting 5 poets conversing in front of two trees, device on final recto, a few woodcut initials. (Some light spotting and staining.) Later 16th-century vellum (rebacked in the 19th-century, 2 small wormholes in spine). Second edition in Italian of one of Petrarch's most important works and certainly the one in which he most reveals his character. It is written in the form of a dialogue, lasting for three days, between the poet and his inspiration, St. Augustine, with the figure of Truth standing by silently and it is to Augustine, as to a friend or confessor, that he pours forth the secrets of his own soul. It was first published, in the original Latin, in c.1470 and the first Italian edition appeared in Siena in 1517. Sander 5595 and pl.337. (2)