DONI, Anton Francesco. La Zucca del Doni.

Provocative Pumpkins

DONI, Anton Francesco. La Zucca del Doni. Venice: Francesco Marcolini . 1551–1552.

Four parts in one volume, 8vo. Eighteenth-century calf, marbled endpapers; Cicalamenti: pp. [32], 63, [1]; Chiachiere : pp. [8], 62, [2 (printer’s device, blank)]; Baie: pp. [8], 64; Frutti: ff. 87, [1], [2 (blank)]; italic and roman letter, titles of Cicalamenti and Frutti within ornate allegorical woodcut borders, woodcut printer’s device to title of Chiachiere and Baie; numerous in-text woodcut illustrations; subtly rejointed, corners expertly restored; uniform light toning, sporadic light spotting and dampstaining, old repair to corner of f. B2 of Baie not affecting text; else very good; early ownership inscription to title (washed and trimmed), nineteenth-century booklabel of Baguenault de la Puchesse to front free endpaper verso.

First edition of the first three parts of Doni’s curious six-part collection of satirical witticisms and dialogues, titled La Zucca (The Pumpkin), published in instalments and sold separately, this copy bound with the final portion, I Frutti della zucca.

Florentine painter, writer, painter, art theorist and musician Anton Francesco Doni (1513–1574) first issued his Zucca in three parts: Cicalamenti della zucca (Chatter of the Pumpkin), Chiachiere (Chit-chat of the Pumpkin), and Baie (Jokes of the Pumpkin). In the contents, accompanied by a full-page woodcut portrait of the author, Doni describes the contents of the Zucca as a collection of ‘gossip, idle chatter, chimeras, clumsiness, witticisms, nursery rhymes, deception, nonsense, lies, whims, caprices, chatter, parables, jests, proverbs, intrigues, mottoes, humour, and other whimsical stories’ (trans.).

Amongst them are stories of a hunchback whose clothes are stolen while he bathes in the Arno; musings on why Florentines only achieve renown outside Florence; and an anecdote in which the humanist and priest Giovanni Norchiati gives Doni a book magnificently bound in gold and receives in exchange offers two crates of fruit (followed by a discourse on the aphorism ‘not all that glitters is gold’). There are also glimpses into Doni’s extensive network: he describes Aretino as a loving father playing games with his young daughter and reproduces letters written to him by Cosimo de’ Medici and Paolo Giovio (with a laudatory sonnet by the latter).

Following the Zucca, Marcolini swiftly issued Doni’s Fiori della zucca (Flowers of the Pumpkin) and Foglie della zucca (Leaves of the Pumpkin), followed by the sixth and final portion, I Frutti della zucca (Fruits of the Pumpkin). This last part is in turn split into mock-academic discourse titled ‘mature fruits’ and a series of letters, including a vernacular rendering of a letter by Dante to Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg. Dante himself is depicted in one of the many numerous illustrations, alongside Petrarch (who elsewhere is depicted individually in profile) and Boccaccio. Others are more emblematic in nature, depicting, for example, a falconer holding a hooded falcon, symbolising the body and the soul; lies, personified by a two-faced woman standing upright, prepared to pivot in any direction; and a woman concealing her face behind a mask, with the motto ‘Quel che più mi molesta ascondo et taccio’ (’I hide and keep quiet that which bothers me most’).

The handsome swash capitals in the text are highly reminiscent of the chancery types of Ludovico degli Arrighi. ‘At Venice the most distinguished printer whose books are almost all in italic was Francesco Marcolini da Forli’ (Johnson and Morison, p. 35). Marcolini had printed the 1544 Dante (the first to contain commentary by Alessandro Vellutello) and the 1538 Lettere of Pietro Aretino, who spoke ‘with great approbation of Marcolini as a printer […] A larger italic used by Marcolini belongs definitely to the same family as those of Arrighi, Blado, and Tagliente’ (ibid.)

Brunet II, col. 812; EDIT16 CNCE 17687; Gamba 1367 (‘this first edition is rarely found complete’, trans.); Graesse II, p. 424; USTC 827596. See Johnson and Morison, ‘The Chancery Types of Italy and France’, in The Fleuron 3 (1924), pp. 23–51.

SKU: 2126688