(CALLOT, JACQUES) Peri, Giovanni Domenico.

Fiesole distrutta. Di Giovanni Domenico Peri, contadino d'Arcidosso.

Firenze (Nella Stamperia di Zanobi Pignoni ), 1619. (4), 197, (3)pp. Fully etched title-page and etched frontispiece portrait of the author, both by Jacques Callot. Woodcut lettrines, culs-de-lampe. Sm. 4to. Late eighteenth-century dark blue straightgrain morocco gilt (rather rubbed). A.e.g. First edition; a second, with corrections, was published in 1621. A long epic poem in ottava rima by a farm laborer "endowed by nature with the genius of poetry" (Belloni). "To provide a book with the portrait of the author or the person to whom it was dedicated, surrounded by a rich allegorical and emblematic frame, was a Baroque custom. Callot designed several of these portraits. The most charming is that of Giovanni Domenico Peri, heading his book ‘Fiesole distrutta,’ published in 1619. Peri was a maître populaire, a Douanier Rousseau of poetry, a simple peasant from Arcidosso who, under the influence of Ariosto and Tasso, wrote verses dedicated to the Grand Duke Cosimo, his Maecenas. Callot surrounded the effigy with the implements of the author’s calling: hay-forks, rakes, shovels, baskets, a ploughshare, and two stately oxen. The hub of the wheel, cleverly devised, serves as an inkstand" (Benesch). Callot’s title-page, equally lovely and often lacking, is a composition known as "La bella giardiniera." Some light wear and light foxing throughout, the two etchings neatly reinserted, with slight loss at the top left margin of the title (not within the platemark), and slight rubbing; inscription on the verso of the title. Ex-libris Sir Thomas Brooke, the owner of the famous Pillone collection in the nineteenth century. Front flyleaf and frontispiece neatly loosened from binding.

• USD 2,500.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: B06762-1

• bookseller: Ars Libri Ltd. (USA)