Statuta Urbis Ferrariae nuper Reformata
1567171<p>Folio 30.5 x 19.5 cm 10 ff. 307 i.e. 308 13 ff. including woodcut title showing Ferrara and Este arms and full-page woodcut portrait of the printer Rossi on EEEviii v. Bound in 18th-century stiff vellum title stenciled on spine. Some minor staining in scattered leaves and some trivial worming in margin but generally a broad-margined and fresh copy excellent. Rare and most likely the earliest acquirable edition of the municipals laws of Ferrara one of the richest and most cultivated of Northern Italian courts published shortly after the concluding session of the Council of Trent 1563. The work contains one of the earliest portrait of a printer in a book he himself produced see below. The work significantly revises the previous publication of local statutory law and is signed by a committee of local jurists 3v-4r. The statutes govern all aspects of civil and criminal law from the buying and selling of goods and property marriage testaments to criminal procedure. The work is of interest for containing a portrait of the printer. Note: Rossi had no editorial or authorial part in the work; he is expressly designated "Typographus" printer in the identifying legend. This is of interest to historians of the book for it showing the developing confidence and prestige enjoyed by 16th-century printers and is analogous though considerably more assertive to putting an element of the printer's process or trade in a publisher's device. "Rossi was near the end of a career as a printer at Ferrara that covered more than 50 years and certainly justified the use of his portrait in this volume" Mortimer I.261. Although it should be regarded as a form of self-indulgence and did not catch on-as say the author portraits on which it is based obviously did-it nonetheless remains an interesting bit of evidence for the elevated status of Italian printers. There is no repertory of examples and we know of no study of the subject but in querying colleagues we have located only two earlier analogous portraits: Rossi pictured himself in smaller format in the colophon to another book he published: Giovanni Maria Verrato's 1561 response to critics of the Council of Trent: Contra responsiones et protestationes. And Francesco Priscianese pictured himself in a Latin grammar published in 1540. Also Prof. Anthony Grafton draws our attention to the portraits of the illustrators in the Historia Stirpium of Leonhart Fuchs 1542. Further searching would doubtless turn up a few other examples but it is clearly an isolated phenomenon The statutes received an incunable edition in 1476 published by Severino da Ferrara BMC VI.609 the only copy we have been able to locate: this edition is not in Goff and we locate no American copy. The next edition was published by Rossi in 1534 with a less elaborate version of the title cut and without the portrait. The present edition is next making it third. According to Mortimer the hypothetical issue points raised by F. Berlan in his Bibliografia degli statuti municipali ed inediti di Ferrara Rome 1878 pp. 21-7 are in need of substantial copy-checking. There are no copies of the editio princeps or the 1534 edition in America; for the present edition OCLC lists Kansas Minnesota and the Waseda Library to which should be added the Harvard copy described by Mortimer. Mortimer Italian 182; Adams F266; Fumagalli Lexicon p. 128 fig 45 portrait; L. Manzoni Bibliografia degli statuti ordini e leggi dei municipali italiani I.2 Bologna 1876 pp. 177-78.</p> Francesco Rossi hardcover books
Martayan Lan, Inc. · États-Unis3 350,00 $US≈ 2 834,44 €
