MACHIAVELLI, Niccolò.
THE ‘TESTINA’ PRINCE
Il Principe
[Geneva, s.n.], \\\'1550\\\' but c.1630£1,950.00
4to. pp. (iv) 106. Italic letter. Woodcut portrait of Machiavelli to t-p. Waterstaining to upper half, at gutter and lower edge, very light, darker to first and last two quires. Light foxing to first and last few leaves, occasional spot, light age-toning (low quality paper), a perfectly reasonable copy in C19 blue wrappers, label to t-p, trace of ink inscription to ffep. In green folding box.
These Genevan imprints, called the ‘Testina’ or ‘little head’ editions because they bore a portrait of Machiavelli (derived from the Comin de Trino edition of 1541), employed false dates to circumvent restrictions on printing Machiavelli in Italy: They were probably printed in the first decades of the seventeenth century. Il Principe, first published 1532, had been on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Roman Catholic list of banned books, since 1559. These editions were issued as sets of Machiavelli’s complete works, under the general title-pages ‘Tutte le opere,’ but could evidently be obtained in their separate parts, with separate registers and paginations.
In The Prince, ‘Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind … Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery. Many of the remedies he proposed for the rescue of Italy were eventually applied. His concept of the qualities demanded from a ruler and the absolute need of a national militia came to fruition in the monarchies of the C17th and their national armies’ (PMM).
Gerber I, p. 99 (Druck B). Gamba 194.2. Bertelli 204 (dated c. 1628-32). EDIT16 CNCE 24638. [OCLC lists copies at Arizona, UCLA, Harvard, Princeton, UT Austin, Stanford, Claremont Colleges, Washington State, etc.].In stock
