IL PETRARCA CON L’ESPOSITIONE DI M. ALESSANDRO VELLUTELLO e Con Molte Altre Utilissime Cose n Diversi Luoghi di Quella Nuovamente da Lui Aggiunte

Venegia: Maestro Bernardino de Vidali, 1528. A very early Edition of the Vellutello Petrarca. With fine heraldic ownership label. Illustrated with the rare two page view of the Valchiusa. This copy with the Babylonian Sonnets (165 ff,) not censored and still included in the text. Rare thus. 4to (mm. 190 x 140), handsomely bound in fine full vellum of the period. (11ff), 185 ff, (51 ff Del Triumpho) pp. A contemporarily bound copy, in a pleasing state of preservation, generally crisp and clean throughout, some interesting notes in very early hands to the pastedowns, a few here and there in the margins of the text-block, interesting notes concerning prohibition to the leaves that contain the Babylonian verses, the back sometime strengthened, the vellum binding strong and in good order. A FINE AND VERY EARLY PRINTING OF THE VELLUTELLO PETRARCA. The volume was dedicated to Carlo Grotta Chancellor to Cardinal Cristofor Madruzzo, Principe Vescovo of Trent and organizer of the Council of Trent. This edition of Petrarca with the commentary of Vellutello, is considered the most important. Especially important is the celebrated commentary on the Canzoniere out of the edition of 1525. Also important is the biography of the poet.
This copy contains the Babylonian Sonnets which were generally censored and seldom included in copies of Petrarca's writings. These Babylonian sonnets, a group of three poems that criticized the Avignon Papacy, were initially banned because they were included in a prohibited Protestant work. In 1557, Pier Paolo Vergerio wrote Alcuni importanti luochi, an attack against the Church that emphasized those three sonnets from Petrarch. Many clerics denounced the greed and corruption of the Avignon papacy. In the 1340s Petrarch wrote, “I am living in the Babylon of the West,” comparing Avignon to the biblical city of vice and corruption. He went on to condemn the habits of prelates who feasted at “licentious banquets” and rode white horses “decked in gold, fed on gold, [and] soon to be shod in gold if the Lord does not check this slavish luxury” (Petrarch in Tuchman, p. 29). His disgust found fuller expression in several sonnets, among them, Sonnet 138, which he addressed to the papal court at Avignon: “O foundry of deceits, cruel prison where good dies and evil is / created and nourished, a hell for the living: it will be a great / miracle if Christ does not finally show his anger against you”
The Canzoniere (poetic “songbook”), is also known as the Rime Sparse (“scattered rhymes”). The work is a series of erotic poems that Petrarch wrote in the Italian vernacular about his love for the mysterious beauty “Laura,” whom he first encountered on April 6, 1327, at the church of St. Clare. Apparently in 1348 Laura and Cardinal Colonna both succumbed to the Black Death, the bubonic plague that was ravaging Europe. Petrarch himself escaped the plague, though he recorded these devastating personal losses in the Canzoniere; Laura’s death, in particular, shaped the resolution of the sequence of poems. Tiring of Church politics, Petrarch left Avignon in 1353 and spent his remaining years in various Italian provinces. He continued work on the Canzoniere, sorting and arranging its poems, until his death in 1374. Although Petrarch was best known among contemporaries for his Latin writings, his vernacular works, especially the Canzoniere, are now regarded as his masterpieces. His exploration of the emotional states of love, yearning, and spiritual aspiration in this work would have a major influence on future generations of poets.