With a Woodcut Initial Prudishly Censored
CATHERINE OF SIENA. Dialogo della serafica vergine, et sposa di Christo ... Diviso in quattro trattati. Nel quale profondissimamente si tratta della providenza di Dio. Et un breve compendio della sua vita, et canonizatione, sotto il pontificato di papa Pio II. Et nel fine si narra il suo felice transito. Venice: Domenico Farri. 1579.
8vo. Eighteenth-century vellum over boards, title inked to spine, edges trimmed (affecting a few manuscript annotations) and stained blue; a few marks and stains to covers, small wormholes to lower board, wanting ties; pp. [32], 652, [3], [1 (blank)]; woodcut to title of flaming Christogram flanked by two kneeling angels, woodcut initials, head-, and tailpieces; some variable light dampstaining and foxing, small wormholes to inner margin of ff. a1-5 (slightly touching a few letters), and to upper inner margin of ff. H2-II4 (not affecting text); contemporary ownership inscription ‘Di Anto Mra Mazzucchelli’ to front flyleaf (see below), ‘Ex libri … palatii’ and ‘Mazzucchellii nepotibus eius coniuge … testamento relictis’ to title; contemporary marginal notes, corrections, underlining, and maniculae to approximately forty pages.
Rare sixteenth-century edition of this masterpiece of medieval mystical tradition and Italian fourteenth-century literature.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), a mystic and pious laywoman, is revered as a saint and Doctor of the Church by the Catholic Church. Her most significant spiritual work, the Dialogo (Dialogue of Divine Providence), delves into the nature of providence and the proper approaches to discretion, prayer, and obedience. The text takes the form of a dialogue between God and Catherine, punctuated with her brief comments, expressions of gratitude for the teachings received, and occasional new requests. A classic of medieval mysticism, it was first published in Italian in 1472 and reprinted nearly seventy times during the sixteenth century.
This edition, printed by Domenico Farri, includes writings by Barduccio Canigiani, Pope Pius II, Anastagio da Monte Altino, and Rainerio de Pagliaresi, and is dedicated to the Venetian noblewoman Isabetta Soranzo. The present copy belonged to Antonio Maria Mazzucchelli, likely a member of the noble Mazzucchelli (or Mazzuchelli) family from Brescia. Below Antonio Maria’s ownership inscription, a later, eighteenth-century hand noted: ‘It seems he was an ancestor of the famous historian of Italian literature, Gio Maria [the Italian writer, bibliographer, and literary historian Giovanni Maria Mazzuchelli (1707-1765)]’. A contemporary hand (possibly Mazzucchelli’s) prudishly censored the woodcut initial of the dedication to Soranzo, which depicted Venus standing nude in a giant scallop shell drawn by two dolphins.
Rare outside Italy: OCLC records only 4 copies in the US (Benedictine University, Folger, Harvard, University of Illinois) and no copies in the UK. Not in Library Hub.
EDIT16 CNCE 10273; USTC 819718. Not in Brunet.
#2120493