Boccace

149651 — 1813: Vitarelli Venezia. Finely bound 19th century Venetian printing of Boccaccio’s masterpiece. 12mo five volumes bound in full straight grain morocco with gilt titles and elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in five compartments within raised gilt bands double gilt ruling to the front and rear panels gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles all edges gilt ribbons bound in illustrated with engravings engraved frontispiece portrait of Boccaccio to Vol. I folding plate to Vols. I II and III. In very good condition. Ownership inscription to each volume. A very elegant set. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Decameron composed between 1348 and 1353 in the shadow of the Black Death stands as a seminal work in the development of European prose fiction and a pivotal text in the emergence of Renaissance humanism. Structured around a frame narrative in which ten young Florentines—seven women and three men—withdraw from plague-stricken Florence to a secluded villa in the countryside the work offers one hundred tales that traverse the full spectrum of human experience. In both form and content Il Decameron marks a decisive departure from the didacticism of medieval literature privileging instead a literary ethos grounded in observation wit and psychological nuance. Boccaccio’s elevation of the vernacular Tuscan dialect helped to standardize Italian as a literary language aligning his prose with the aspirations of civic humanism and placing him in dialogue with figures such as Dante and Petrarch. Vitarelli unknown