Opera [including: Epistolarum familiarium libri XII]

Folio. Two parts in one volume. 136 [i.e. 138] leaves; [72] leaves. Collation: a-i6, K8, l8, m-x6, y8; A-M6. Old vellum over boards, some contemporary marginal annotations. Restoration to lower outer corner of the title page not affecting the text. Edit 16, CNCE 24232; Goff, S-4; S.D. Bowd, Venice's Most Loyal City: Civic Identity in Renaisssance Brescia, (Cambridge, MA, 2010), p. 318; M. L. King, Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance, (Princeton, N.J., 1986), pp. 426-427; B. Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy, (New York, 1999), p. 187. FIRST COLLECTED EDITION of Sabellico's works and first edition of his twelve books of letters (occupying leaves a1v-l1v), which are a most important source for his biography. The Epistolae, dedicated to Marcantonio Morosini, are followed by Orationes, De situ Venetae urbis (a topographical description of the city of Venice as it was during the author's life), De Venetiis magistratibus, De praetoris officio, De reparatione Latinae linguae (considered the first historical and connected narrative of the Renaissance movement in Italy), De officio scribae (on the office of a government secretary), and De vetustate Aquileiae. The whole second part consists of his neo-Latin poetry, of which the poem De rerum et artium inventoribus, in which he enumerates the inventions of mankind and their inventors, is the most interesting (cf. R. Chavasse, ?De inventoribus rerum': Marcantonio Sabellico and Polydore Virgil, in: ?Polidoro Virgilio e la cultura umanistica europea?, R. Bacchielli, ed., Urbino, 2003, pp. 207-224).W.A. Copinger (Supplementum, London, 1895-1902, no. 5196) attributes the first part to a printer from Brescia around 1490. In fact there is some visible difference in the typographical material and woodcut initials between the two parts of the volume (cf. M. Sabellico, De latinae linguae reparatione, G. Bottari, ed., Messina, 1999, p. 72).Among Sabellico's correspondents were members of his family, especially his son Mario and his brother Catalucio da Coccio, and a wide range of personalities: fellow humanists, church dignitaries, political leaders and noblemen, e.g. Giovanni Stefano Emiliano, Pomponio Leto, Giovanni Antonio Flaminio, Ermolao Barbaro, Antonio, Benedetto and Tommaso Trevisan, Giorgio Merula, Angelo Sabino, Jacopo Filippo Foresti, Sebastiano Badoer, Leonardo Loredan, Palladio Negri, Giovanni Battista Cantalicio, Paolo Santonino, Pietro Barozzi, Angelo Poliziano, Antonio Bonfini, Gasparino Barzizza, Pietro and Paolo Marsi, Andrea Mocenigo, Carlo Barbavero, Agostino and Marco Barbarigo, Francesco Piccolomini, Girolamo Donà, Domenico Grimani, Lodovico Sforza, Ercole d'Este, Giovanni Bentivoglio, Lodovico Odasi, Antonio Bonfini, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Bernardo Bembo, Girolamo Squarzafico, Fabio and Giovanni Pontano, Coriolano Cippico, Antonio Corner, Antonio Moretto.One letter is addressed to a woman: the learned Cassandra Fedele. The collection also contains some letters addressed to him (e.g. Pomponio Leto). That his letters became models of an elegant style is shown nine years later after its first publication by a selection of letters entitled Breviores epistolae, ?for teaching the rudiments of the Latin language to adolescents', which were published at Leipzig in 1511 (two editions in that year, reprinted in 1513 and 1520). They could be classified by topics such as family, sons' education, editing and publishing, dedication and patronage, classical texts, Venetian life and ceremony.The letter at p. 52 is addressed to the poet and playwright Marco Armonio (1477-c. 1552), who in 1500 had written and staged in Venice a neo-Latin comedy entitled Stephanium, which was greeted with great enthusiasm. In the letter, Sabellico, who had the chance to read the comedy before it was published around 1503 and had attended first-hand its first staging, praises the work for the ?argumentum, dignitas personarum, sententiarum gravitas, verba.…