From the library of Edward and Marianna Heron-Allen
PALLAVICINO, Ferrante. Opere permesse … dedicate all’illustrissimo et eccellentissimo sign. Gio. Battista Cornaro, procuratore di San Marco [Half-title: Tutte le opere permesse … Ripartite in quattro tomi. Aggiontaui la sua Vita non mai stampata]. Venice: Stamperia del Turrini. 1655.
Four vols, 12mo. Contemporary full calf, spines richly gilt in compartments, titles lettered directly in gilt to one, edges sprinkled red and green; pp. vol. I: [36, collective half-title and engraved title, engraved frontispiece to Vita], 192, 192, 166, bound without final blank; II: 432, 48, 96, lacking half-title and engraved title; III: [4, half-title and engraved title] 288, 216, 87, [1]; IV: 336, 118, [2 (blank)], 104, lacking half-title and engraved title; each individual work with title-page, woodcut printer device to titles, woodcut initials; extremities a little worn, boards a little rubbed, spine ends of vols I & IV with small chips, front hinge of vol. I cracked but holding firm, small, old restoration to foot of spine of vol. I; internally very good and clean; some contemporary marginal marks and erasures in ink to first 40 pp. of vol. II; 18th-century ownership signature “Fingerlin”, and ownership inscription of “J v. Prieser”, dated “Augsburg … 17 März, 1788”, in ink to front free endpaper of vol. I; early inscription in ink (washed) and 19th-century signature in pencil to half-title of vol. I; armorial bookplate of Edward and Marianna Heron-Allen, dated “July MDCCCXCI”, to front pastedowns of each vol. (see below).
First collective edition of the permitted works of Ferrante Pallavicino, including the first edition of his biography by Girolamo Brusoni, with a distinguished provenance.
Ferrante Pallavicino (1615-1644), a writer from Piacenza, was notorious for his biting satirical attacks on the Church of Rome. “Pallavicino was the only Italian author of his epoch capable of a coherent vision that integrated satire, scepticism, and naturalistic morality” (Muir, p. 90). His scurrilous and often obscene works, including attacks on Pope Urban VIII and the Jesuits, led to his arrest in Venice in 1641, though he was released after six months. Following the publication of La retorica delle puttane (1642), an anti-Jesuit work and masterpiece of seventeenth-century pornography, he fled to Bergamo. In 1644 he was lured to France by the promise of a post under Cardinal Richelieu, but was betrayed in Avignon, arrested by Vatican agents, and beheaded.
This four-volume edition collects only Pallavicino’s works that had escaped censorship by the Roman Inquisition. Each is separately titled and paginated, suggesting they were also sold individually. Among them are Il prencipe hermafrodito (inspired by an unidentified Spanish source), La Susanna (on the corruption of judges), and La Bersabee (on King David’s passion for Bathsheba). The set also includes the first edition of Girolamo Brusoni’s biography of Pallavicino, listing both his banned and permitted works. A close friend and associate of Pallavicino, Brusoni provides one of the principal contemporary accounts of the writer’s life and literary output.
Provenance: From the library of Johann Heinrich von Prieser (1749-1801), Augsburg Council consul and book collector, with his ownership inscription dated 1788. The volumes later entered the library of polymath Edward Heron-Allen (1861-1943) and his wife Marianna (née Lehmann, d. 1902). A translator, scientist, and scholar of Persian literature, Heron-Allen is best known for his translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1899). He and Marianna collaborated on literary translations until her premature death.
See Edward Muir, The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines and Opera (2007).
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