Overview
Florence
Italy
RVF 366
Description
4o; A4-E4; 20 fols.
paper; Petrarch’s poem in italic type and lecture in roman type; printed numbering; single lines or small sections of Petrarch’s poems set in central blocks, with prose text of lecture distributed across the page beneath each of them.
DISCORSO | INTORNO ALLA | CANZONE | DEL PETRARCHA | VERGINE BELLA. | DI M[ESSER] PIETRO CAPONSACCHI | Pantaneti Aretino. | [printer’s mark] | IN FIORENZA, | Appresso Giorgio Marescotti. | M D LXXVII.
A1r: title page;
A1v: blank;
A2r-A2v: Pietro Caponsacchi’s dedicatory letter to Giovanna d’Austria granduchessa di Toscana (‘Alla serenissima reina Giovanna d’Avstria, gran dvchessa di Toscana vnica mia padrona’);
A3r-B1r: RVF 366;
B1v-E4r: Caponsacchi’s lecture on RVF 366 (<inc after RVF 366.1-3> Si come Dante, con chiara scorta, sagliendo alla superna ruota, trascorse con viuo raggio il cielo di cerchio in cerchio; <exp followed by RVF 366.1-3> Ond’il poeta il tutto comprese, quando egli nel principio della Canzone cosi altamente scrisse);
E4r: the Inquisition’s imprimatur;
E4v: printer’s mark followed by colophon: In Fiorenza, Stampata per Giorgio Marescotti. M D LXXVII.
Copy Seen
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
Florence
Italy
Each line of the canzone is analysed and carefully explained in its theological and philosophical meaning. Extensive reference is made to Dante’s Commedia throughout. The philosophical and theological sections include quotations from Plato and Aristotle.
Sapegno 2004, 148, 181