Search Results: Titles starting with L from Govi Rare Books LLC

Folio (287x194 mm). 146, [6] leaves and [8] woodcut folding plates. Signatures: A-Z6 AA6 BB8. On the title page printer's device, showing Orpheus under a tree playing the viola. Author's portrait, at the age of 44, printed on title-page verso. Beautiful woodcut decorated initials. Music notation in text. Later polished calf gilt, marbled edges. Contemporary ownership's inscription on the title page: 'Est S. Petri de Perusio'; below the initials 'D.d.M.' and the date '1857'. Small marginal tear to l. D4 with no damage to the text, title page slightly soiled, a nice copy printed on a fine, crispy paper.
A beautiful copy, complete with all the eight plates, of the extremely rare first edition, first issue, of one of the most influential music theory books of the sixteenth century. The book is dedicated to Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este.
The Renaissance musicologist Edward Lowinsky acknowledges Vicentino as "the greatest revolutionary of the sixteenth century [...] The epochal significance of his treatise… Read More

A URBAN TRAGICOMEDY
FOR THE WEDDING BADOER-CONTARINI
12mo (134x73 mm). 65, [1] leaves. Collation: A-E12 F6. The last leaf is a blank. Printer's device on title page. Roman and italic types. Woodcut decorative ornaments and initials. Later flexible vellum. On the last leaf verso manuscript dedication "Alla Serenis.ma Sig.ra Palazzina Anconitana" signed with the letter "G" and followed by the drawing of a heart within a square. Some light marginal staining.
Rare first edition of this tragicomedy in five acts in verse dedicated to Giovanni Badoer on the occasion of his wedding with Maria Contarini.
In the dedication, dated Venice, 20 September 1597, the author states that with this play he introduced something new into drama by bringing love stories far away from woods and rivers (i.e., pastoral and piscatorial dramas) and setting them for the first time in a urban landscape (Rome is the scene): "nel prendere argomento io della mia favola, Cittadino, & nell'introdurre Città, e Cittadini, forsi non ho… Read More

4to (183x129 mm). [4], 138, [2] pp. and [4] engraved folding plates (signed "D. Paulus Amato Ingignerius inventor"). Signatures: †2 A6 B-I8. Decorated woodcut initials and tailpiece. Modern morocco gilt. Upper margin cut a bit short, but not affecting the text, some marginal restorations, small repaired hole on pp. 59/60 with loss of a few words, some foxing and staining, but all in all a good copy.
First edition of the description of the festivals held in Palermo, in the year 1704, honoring patron Saint Rosalia. The text is attributed to Ignazio Vio in the dedication. The plates are signed by Paolo Amato, the designer and inventor of all the apparatuses. Amato was an engineer and architect in charge of the decorations for almost all Palermo festivities between the 1680s and 1714, the year of his death. Particularly impressive is one of the folding plates, showing a procession of chariots looking like galleons, which measures 1098 mm of length. The other plates show an incredible firework machine… Read More

A UTOPIAN-REVOLUTIONARY CONSTITUTION
16mo (196x140 mm). 70, [2] pp. Editor's printed wrappers (slightly worn). At pp. 21, 38 and 39 the word "Repubblica" has not been replaced with the word "Reggenza" as in later issues. Signed by the author on the front flyleaf recto: "Gabriele d'Annunzio Fiume d'Italia 1920". Some quires loose. A very good full-margined copy, partly still unopened.
First edition, printed in one hundred and ten non-commercial copies, of the full text of the "Carta del Carnaro", a visionary constitution combining the sociological and political insights of Gabriele D'Annunzio with the revolutionary spirit of Alceste De Ambris. The present volume is in the first issue, in which the word "Repubblica" ('Republic') has not yet been replaced for political reasons with the word "Reggenza" ('Regency'). The word "Repubblica" still appears on August 31 in the Fiume newspaper "Vedetta d'Italia" and on September 1 in the "Popolo d'Italia", but is corrected in the official version published,… Read More

12mo (140x83 mm). [6], 166, [2] leaves. Collation: a6 A-O12. The leaf O12 is a blank. Contemporary vellum, spine with gilt title on label (stain on the back panel). Ownership entries of a certain Luigi Bernini. Wormhole in the last 3 leaves with loss of text, two small emblems stamped on the title page, a bit browned, but genuine.
FIRST EDITION, second issue, of the first draft of the Secchia rapita, the most successful mock-heroic poem of Italian literature. Composed between 1614 and 1618, the work first circulated in manuscript form, immediately attracting the attention of the Inquisition. After several (sometimes illegal) attempts to have it printed in Modena and Padua, Tassoni was forced to go to France to avoid ecclesiastical censure. It was through the efforts of Jean Chapelain, a friend and collaborator of G.B. Marino, that Tassoni's poem was eventually printed in Paris in late 1621. Of this first Paris edition three issues are known. Almost at the same time, a counterfeit, probably printed in… Read More