Dati, Carlo Roberto (1619-1676). Vite de pittori antichi scritte e illustrate da Carlo Dati nell’Accademia della Crusca Lo Smarrito. Alla Maesta Cristianiss. di Luigi XIIII. Re di Francia e di Navarr

Dati, Carlo Roberto (1619-1676). Vite de pittori antichi scritte e illustrate da Carlo Dati nell’Accademia della Crusca Lo Smarrito. Alla Maesta Cristianiss. di Luigi XIIII. Re di Francia e di Navarr

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Dati, Carlo Roberto (1619-1676).

Vite de pittori antichi scritte e illustrate da Carlo Dati nell’Accademia della Crusca Lo Smarrito. Alla Maesta Cristianiss. di Luigi XIIII. Re di Francia e di Navarra. Florence, Stamperia della Stella, 1667.

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Between erudition and science

Dati, Carlo Roberto (1619-1676).

4° (232x166 mm). Collation: [π]⁴, *⁴, A-Z⁴. Half-title. Title-page in red and black, bearing the woodcut device of the Crusca Academy with a flour bolter and the motto ‘IL PIV BEL FIORE NE COGLIE’; the Crusca device is repeated, in smaller format, on fols. C1r, N2v, and Y4v. Dati’s woodcut device as a member of the Crusca, in the form of a baker’s peel (pala) with his motto ‘CHE MI MOSTRA LA VIA’ and nickname ‘SMARRITO’, on fols. *4r, K4r, and T4r. Woodcut head- and tailpieces. Contemporary marbled calf. Spine with five raised bands, underlined by narrow gilt friezes (faded); gilt armorial tool to the compartments; title lettered in gilt on the second compartment. Speckled edges. A few scratches and small losses to the covers; early repairs to the extremities of the spine. A very good copy. Quires O and P slightly toned, a few small spots. A single tiny hole running throughout the leaves, without any loss. On the front pastedown, the early inked shelfmarks ‘B.IX.26’ and ‘B.III.15’; the number ‘2665’ written in a slightly later hand. On the rear pastedown, the note ‘Edizione citata dalla Crusca Haym, id- 1771, p. 554’, in an early nineteenth-century hand.

The first edition of this learned work on ancient painters. A prominent figure of seventeenth-century Florence, Carlo Roberto Dati was well educated in the humanities and sciences, and belonged to the circle of Galileo’s disciples, together with Francesco Redi and Evangelista Torricelli. In 1648, he obtained the chair of classical languages at the Florentine university. He was, furthermore, a member of the Academy of Crusca, the first language academy in the world, founded in 1582, for which he served as a secretary and actively collaborated in drafting the third edition of the Vocabolario, which would finally appear in 1691. Dati’s academic name or nome di Crusca was ‘Smarrito’, and both the woodcut device of the Academy and Dati’s personal Crusca pala, or baker’s peel, with the motto ‘che mi mostra la via’ (i.e., ‘it shows me the way’) are used as tailpieces in his Vite de pittori antichi. The Vite de pittori antichi is the most enduring of the numerous literary and scientific texts published by Dati in his lifetime. It contains the biographies of four celebrated Greek painters of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, Zeuxis of Heraclea, Parrhasius of Ephesus, Apelles of Colophon, and Protogenes of Caria. The original plan was, however, still more ambitious: the intention had in fact been to publish an extensive history of ancient painting, as his correspondence and papers preserved at the National Library of Florence demonstrate. Of this grand project, only the present volume came to light, dedicated by Dati to no less than Louis XIV, King of France, who had granted him a yearly benefit in 1666 on account of his merits in the Republic of Letters.

Dati relied on ancient sources for information on the life and works of each painter, and he also consulted a great number of manuscripts made accessible thanks to his vast and numerous intellectual relationships. Material was provided, for example, by one of his closest friends and correspondents, the famous ‘Galileian’ Cassiano Dal Pozzo. Meanwhile, the renowned artist Salvator Rosa supplied detailed explanations on painting techniques. Each narrative section pertaining to a given artist’s life is followed by Dati’s learned commentaries on specific textual, artistic, or antiquarian issues.

The Vite de pittori antichi enjoyed wide success, and continues to stand for the fruitful link between erudition and science, one of the most interesting features of seventeenth-century Italy.

STC 17th Century Italian, p. 293; Gamba 425; Cicognara 2252; A. Mirto, Le vite dei pittori antichi di Carlo Roberto Dati e gli studi erudito-antiquari, Florence 1953; G. Perini, “Carlo Malvasia’s Florentine Letters. Insight into Conflicting Trends in Seventeenth-Century Italian Art Historiography”, The Art Bulletin, 70 (1988), pp. 273-299 (esp. pp. 282-284); F. Solinas, “Cassiano Dal Pozzo (1588-1657). Il ritratto di Jan van den Hoecke e l’Orazione di Carlo Dati”, Bollettino d’arte, 80 (1995-1996), pp. 141-164; A. Mirto, “Rapporti epistolari tra Cassiano dal Pozzo e Carlo Roberto Dati”, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, 2 (2001), pp. 7-102; Idem, “Lettere di Petrus Scavenius a Carlo Roberto Dati”, Studi secenteschi, 61 (2020), pp. 253-288.