ANDREINI, Isabella
ANDREINI, Isabella - Image 2
ANDREINI, Isabella - Image 3
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ANDREINI, Isabella

£7,500.00

8vo. pp. (xlvi [laudatory verses]) [ii] 335 [i] (ix) [i] 97 (i). Italic with headers and index in Roman letter. Two parts, separate t-p to each with woodcut printer’s device. Finely engraved emblem of a firework in flight (‘Elevat Ardor’) to verso of first t-p by Thomas de Leu, engraved portrait of Andreini to verso of second leaf by Raphael Sadeler, 1602. Woodcut initials, typographic head- and tailpieces. Original limp vellum on two supports, some staining to lower corner, remains of ties, paper tabs adhered to pastedowns, ms. title to spine and inscription to upper cover, ‘For Andrew Suenonis’, another to ffe. dated 29 August 1615. A very good, clean copy.

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Description

Rare second Bordone edition of the collected Rime and Sonetti of Isabella Andreini (1562-1604), first published in 1601; a Parisian edition also appeared in 1603. The first edition to appear after Andreini’s death while travelling from France to Italy, it contains numerous laudatory odes and elegies in Italian and Latin, appearing here for the first time. Andreini was a noted Italian actress of the commedia dell’arte who performed with the Compagnia dei Comici Gelosi, one of the predominant troupes of the time; the stock character of the inamorata Isabella is supposedly named for her. In addition to the plays that she wrote for I Gelosi, Andreini’s poetry earned her a reputation for eloquence, which gained her a place in the Accademia degli Intenti of Pavia (for which she took the name ‘Accessa’, appearing here in the emblematic frontispiece), and which is attested here in the elegiac verses, all by men, many fellow academicians, at the start of the volume. Andreini was chiefly a writer of Petrarchan sonnets, of which there are well over two hundred in this volume. The index of titles further divides Andreini’s poems into madrigali, canzoni, sestine, epithalami, centoni and capitoli, as well as funerary verses and eclogues, the latter describing the love affairs of various shepherds and nymphs.

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