Diverse imprese accommodate a diverse moralità, con versi che i loro significati dichiarano. Tratte da gli Emblemi dell'Alciato.

Bookseller Notes

The first emblem book with Italian text, this is an important edition of the work of Andrea Alciati (1492-1550), the humanist and jurist who launched the emblematic genre. Part of an extensive programme of printing Alciati initiated by the 'merchant publisher' Guillaume Rouill (c. 1518-89) and printer/bookseller Mac Bonhomme (fl. 1536-69), who have 'a particularly important role to play in the history of Alciati editions' (Rawles & Saunders p. 5). They were instrumental in disseminating the texts in modern vernacular tongues, as here, where the text appears in the Italian translation of Francesco Donati, to whom the work is dedicated. Rouill gave to Alciati's emblems 'an order which lasted for centuries [...] he disposed things according to Horace's rhetorical idea of appropriateness. One moved from the highest, most lofty subject to the lowest and most earthly' (Zenon Davis p. 101).This edition was published with two states of the title, one for Bonhomme and another for Rouill (with his eagle and snake device), of which ours is the latter. The work follows the fundamental design of the 1548 8vo Latin edition which was probably the precise source; the emblems included are those which have woodcut illustrations in the 1548 16mo edition, with only 3 omissions, plus the 11 'Trees' (Rawles & Saunders p. 49).See: Natalie Z. Davis, 'Publisher Guillaume Rouill Businessman and Humanist' in R. J. Schoeck (ed.) Editing Sixteenth Century Texts: Papers given at the Editorial Conference University of Toronto October, 1965 (U Toronto Press, 1966) 72-112.