Rime di Monsignor P. Bembo.

Italic type. 

8vo (155 x 110mm). 48, [10]ff. Speckled glazed paper wrappers with vellum ties (spine worn, glaze chipped, wear to covers with tears at head and foot, corners and edges bumped and worn). 

Venice, [Comin da Trino],

Early edition of the groundbreaking poetry of cardinal, humanist and architect of the Italian language, Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), containing both his Rime and the Stanze. The printers of the first edition obtained a ten-year privilege for the work on its publication in 1530; this edition was published as soon as it expired in 1540 (one of three different editions to be produced in that year alone).

The Rime are not only an exceptional example of Petrarchan love poetry but also demonstrate the practical employment of the principles of language that Bembo laid out in his Prose della Volgare Lingua (1525). In this treatise, Bembo advocated the use of Italian, specifically the Tuscan of Petrarch and Boccaccio, as a literary language superior to Latin; his Rime functioned as compelling evidence in support of his argument. He also revisited his other, earlier work, Gli Asolani (1497-1504) following publication of the Prose to ensure that it conformed to the criteria he established. 

Two ownership notes on front free endpaper, dated 1793 and 1883. Notes in Italian in eighteenth-century (?) hand filling blank space of title pages of the Rime and the Stanze, blank recto of final leaf, and sparse annotations in same hand throughout text - seemingly diary entries, often describing the weather. 

Foxing and staining, waterstains at upper fore-edge of gatherings D-G. 

CNCE 5016. BMSTC (Italian), 81. Adams, B601. 

Stock Code: 228145