Pigna, Giovanni Battista (1529-1575). Gli Heroici di Gio. Battista Pigna, a Donno Alfonso da Este II. Duca di Ferrara V.... Venice, Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari, 1561.
Pigna, Giovanni Battista (1529-1575). Gli Heroici di Gio. Battista Pigna, a Donno Alfonso da Este II. Duca di Ferrara V.... Venice, Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari, 1561.
Pigna, Giovanni Battista (1529-1575).
Gli Heroici di Gio. Battista Pigna, a Donno Alfonso da Este II. Duca di Ferrara V....
Venice, Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari, 1561.
Se ne trovano copie in carta grande ed in carta turchina
— S. Bongi —
Pigna, Giovanni Battista (1529-1575).
Gli Heroici di Gio. Battista Pigna, a Donno Alfonso da Este II. Duca di Ferrara V.... Venice, Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari, 1561.
4° (210x152 mm). Printed on blue Paper. Collation: A-M4, N6, *4, **4. 105, [19] pages. Complete with fol. N6 blank. Roman and italic type. Woodcut printer’s device on the title-page, a different device on fol. N5v. Woodcut animated initials, head- and tailpieces. Fol. L4v within woodcut architectural border. Nineteenth-century cardboards, covered with brown paper. Spine with title in gilt lettering. A good copy, a few repairs to the lower gutter, not affecting the text.
Provenance: from the library of Count Henry Chandon de Briailles (1898-1937; ex-libris on the recto of the front flyleaf).
First and only edition of this famous heroic poem, exceptionally presented in the only extant copy printed on blue paper.
The Heroici was composed by the renowned humanist Giovan Battista Nicolucci, better known as Giovanni Battista Pigna, secretary to Alfonso II, Duke of Este, historian at the Ferrara court and great commentator of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. The work is dedicated by Pigna to his illustrious patron, and narrates, over forty-nine ottava rima stanzas, the true events of the duke’s fall from his horse during a tournament. The poem is introduced by three books in prose, in which Pigna expounds his theory on tragic poetry and the heroic epic and provides an analysis of the peculiar features of these poetic genres.
Bongi states that of the Heroici printed by Gabriele Giolito de’ Ferrari “se ne trovano copie in carta grande ed in carta turchina”, one of which is in the hands of the “cav. Andrea Tessier di Venezia”. The reference is to the library of the Venetian cavaliere Andrea Tessier (d. 1896), which was sold in Munich in 1900 by Jacques Rosenthal, and which contained a copy “tiré sur papier bleu” (Bibliothek Tessier. Katalog eins grossen Theils der Bibliotheken des verstorbenen Chevalier Andrea Tessier und des Marchese de***, lot 534). This copy may have been purchased by Count Raoul Chandon de Briailles and subsequently inherited by his son Henry, whose ex libris is pasted on the flyleaf of the copy offered here. A blue-paper copy of Pigna’s work was also sold in London in 1783, at the sale of the distinguished library collected by Thomas Croft. The catalogue Bibliotheca Croftsiana lists the entry “Pigna (Gio. Batt.) gli Heroici 4° perg. Vineg. per Gab. Giolito 1561. printed upon blue paper”.
Adams P-1208; Bongi Annali, ii, p. 121; Nuovo-Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa nell’Italia del xvi secolo, Genève 2005, p. 423.
