Female patronage, a female recipient

Limainbert, Matteo (fl. second half of 19th century).

Lettere di sentimento e d’altri generi... dedicate alla nobilissima dama la sig. marchesa Ginevra Bartolommei nata Morelli. Florence, Gioacchino Pagani, 1788.

8° (196x131 mm). Printed on blue paper. XIV, 87, [1] pages. Woodcut ornament on the title-page. Engraved vignette on p. iii, showing the coat of arms of the Bartolomei family. Handsome contemporary maroon morocco. Covers framed in a rich floral border; cornerpiece and fleuron, all in gilt. Smooth spine, tooled with gilt fillets and Greek frets. Decorated-paper pastedowns and flyleaves. Gilt edges. A few small scratches to lower cover, corners somewhat bumped, upper joint and extremities of spine slightly rubbed. A good copy, printed on strong paper. The upper blank margin waterstained, some foxing and spotting. Modern bibliographical notes pencilled on the verso of the first front flyleaf.

Provenance: mid-nineteenth-century ownership inscription on the second front flyleaf ‘Appartiene al Sig.r Casimiro Giusteschi’, referring to the Tuscan engineer Casimiro Giusteschi, a member of the Georgofili Academy founded in Florence in 1759.

This volume collects letters written by Limainbert to various female correspondents, and opens with the author’s dedicatory epistle to his patroness, the Marquise Ginevra Adimari Morelli (d. 1822), wife of Lorenzo Maria Bartolomeo and a member of one of the most pre-eminent Florentine families.

A notice of the publication of Limainbert’s Lettere was published in the learned Florentine journal Gazzetta Toscana on 24 January 1789, stressing the stylistic elegance of the author and providing information on the price of the book, a copy of which, evidently printed on ordinary paper, could be purchased for the sum of ‘un paolo’.

The binding of this copy, with its fine decoration of floral tools, may suggest the volume was gifted by the author to a woman.

Novelle letterarie pubblicate in Firenze l’anno MDCCLXXXIX , Firenze 1789, p. 499.