Beschreibung
THE GOURARY COPY -- THE ONLY EXAMPLE EVER TO COME TO MARKET. Bologna: Giacomo Monti, 1679. First edition. Pot folio in 10s (11 5/16" x 7 15/16", 288mm x 202mm). [Full collation available.] With an engraved title. Bound in modern vellum. Bumps to the corners, with some splits and little losses at the head. Mild dampstain to the lower fore-corner. Engraving and final leaf mounted on new stubs. Bookplate of Paul and Marianne Gourary to the front paste-down, above an obliterated bookplate. "8." in ink manuscript (and graphite) to the upper edge of the engraved title, presumably indicating its position in an earlier Sammelband. Margherita de' Medici (1612-1679) was profoundly pan-European aristocrat; she counted among her great-grandparents Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria; Anna of Austria; Anna of Bohemia and Hungary; Holy Roman Emperor Francis I; Charles III, Duke of Lorraine; Eleonora of Toledo and Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Born the fourth child of Cosimo II de' Medici and Maria Magdalena of Austria, Margherita was educated in Latin as well as art and music. She was wed in 1628 to Odoardo Farnese, Duke of Parma; Claudio Monteverdi wrote the opera Mercurio e Marte for the occasion. After Odoardo's death in 1646, Margherita served as regent until the majority of their son Ranuccio II. As a member of two of the great Italian houses, her death was a great state occasion. Although laid to rest at Santa Maria della Steccata in Parma, the Duchess received her funerary homage (tributo d'ossequio funebre) from the Collegio Anacarano -- a legal college, named for the jurist Pietro of Ancarano, long patronized by the Farnese family -- within the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Bologna. Odoardo Farnese had provided the site for the construction of the Novitiate (the facility for those studying to become Jesuits), whose completion came long after his death but only four years before the death of Margherita. The text begins with an essay on the relationship beween the college, the novitiate and the Farnese family, as well as extolling the virtues of the late Duchess. It then goes on to describe the pomp and processions of the funeral itself. The remaining pages (9-21) print the funeral oration, which is a meditation on Margherita's great piety, drawing particularly on the meaning of her name (pearl); indeed, the heading of the oration begins "La Margarita più del Ciel, che del Mare" (the Pearl of the Sky rather than of the Sea). The work is extremely rare, not appearing in any institutional collections (per OCLC) except for two copies at the Archiginnasio library in Bologna (17. O. III. 08 op. 8, interesting that it too appears to be the eighth item in a Sammelband; their cataloguing attributes some part of the work to Giovanni Battista Laviosa). Consequently it does not appear in any of the bibliographies: Berlin, Cicognara, Lipperheide or Ruggieri. The present example was purchased at the sale of "fête books," as they are known, amassed by Paul (principally) and Marianne Gourary. After Paul's death in 2007, the collection -- "Splendid Ceremonies" -- was sold by Christie's New York (12 June 2009), in which the present item was lot 50. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers JLR0585
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