Overview
Venice
Italy
RVF
Description
8°; a-c8, d10; 29 [i.e. 34] fols.
paper; Petrarch’s poems in italic type, lecture in roman type; printed numbering; longer sections of Petrarch’s poems set on left in small blocks, with prose text of lecture distributed across the page beneath them; small sections of Petrarch’s poems included in the text of the lecture.
LETTIONE | DI | LODOVICO GANDINI. | sopra vn dubbio, | Come il PETRARCA non lodasse LAVRA | espressamente dal Naso. | RIME DEL | MEDESIMO. | CON PRIVILEGGIO [sic]. | [printer’s mark] | IN VINEGIA Al segno della Pace, 1581.
a1r: title page;
a1v: blank;
a2r-a3r: Lodovico Gandini’s dedicatory letter to Matteo Taverna (‘Al molto illvstre conte Matteo Taverna’);
a3v: blank;
a4r-c6v: Gandini’s academic lecture on the reasons why Petrarch never worshipped Laura’s nose (‘Lettione di Lodovico Gandini sopra vn dubbio, come il Petrarca non lodasse Lavra espressamente dal naso’; <inc> Il dvbbio, ch’io proposi questi giorni à dietro; come hauendo il Petrarca no[n] pur in generale, mà distintamente lodato la sua Lavra; <exp> Che mi resta dunque? non altro, se non rimetter, come liberamente rimetto, il mio ragionamento al benigno odorato de’ uostri prudentissimi nasi);
c7r-d10r: thirty-four of Gandini’s poems (‘Rime di Lodovico Gandini’);
d10v: blank.
Copy Seen
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale
Florence
Italy
Gandini’s lecture can be divided into three parts. It first lists a series of ancient poets (including Catullus, Cicero, Horace, Vergil) and philosophers (Aristotle) to demonstrate that the nose is a decorous part of the human body. The lecture then illustrates positive allegorical meanings attributed to the nose such as ‘sagacia’ (sagacity) and ‘discretione’ (discretion). The third and final part explains why Petrarch did not worship Laura’s nose, arguing that he did so to prevent later readers from making negative associations about it that would be in conflict with his beloved’s perfection.
In the Florence copy, the original cover has been replaced by a modern one and three blank fols. have been added both at the beginning and at the end of the volume. Between the cover and the initial endpaper is a blue flying handwritten fol., which provides a brief bibliographic description of the volume and stresses its rarity.