A rare edition of Bembo’s most significant literary work, accompanied by the controversial dedicatory letter to noblewoman, humanist and duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519).
Before becoming a Cardinal, well-known Italian humanist Pietro Bembo enjoyed an eventful romantic life; a dutiful Petrarchist, he believed it necessary to always burn for a “Laura”, a romantic muse. Gli Asolani is a collection of three books in dialogue form focusing on platonic love. Importantly it is one of the first works by Bembo to be written in vernacular, and was composed between 1497 and 1502, when he was having an epistolary love affair with poet Maria Savorgnan. By the time that Gli Asolani was first printed (Aldus, 1505), however, Bembo had already begun a new relationship with Borgia, and the work is dedicated to her; she seems to have been his greatest flame.
Rendered infamous by the murderous reputation of her family, whose eventual fall from grace she successfully navigated, Lucrezia Borgia was a deft political operator - with considerable power at both her father’s papal court, and over the Ferrarese territories - and an important patron of the arts. At the time of Bembo’s dedication, Lucrezia had taken as her third husband Alfonso d’Este, who became Duke of Ferrara only a few weeks before the publication of Gli Asolani. Her new political position might explain why the first copies of the Asolani that went to press did not contain Bembo’s dedicatory letter to the “duchessa illustrissima.” They continued to have an epistolary relationship until 1517 and their surviving letters have been described by Lord Byron as “the prettiest love- letters in the world.”
This edition was printed in Milan in 1517 by Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler, the most prolific Milanese printer of the 16th century. It is the presence of the dedicatory letter to Borgia that has long made this book desirable to collectors (Fahy, 1988); indeed, one of the previous owners of the present copy, Rawdon Brown, has written that “the dedication to Lucrezia Borgia renders this edition valuable.” Brown offers his own take on the suppression of the letter in some copies and editions, in a manuscript note on the first flyleaf here, along with his opinions on the works of Bembo (or, to use his words, the “pedantic Cardinal”).
Provenance: 1. Initials “G.T.” in early hand on rear pastedown. 2. Acquired by antiquarian and historian Rawdon Brown (1806-1883), in Bologna in 1834. Brown lived and worked in Venice for forty years, and the manuscript annotations on the front pastedown and first flyleaf are probably in his hand. In 1858, Brown gifted the book to his dear friend, Edward Cheney (1803-1884), British art collector and watercolour painter who lived in Venice from the 1840s to 1866: a book label on the front pastedown bears his family motto, “Fato prudentia major.” After his death, his “fine library” (ODNB) was sold by Sotheby’s in June, 1886.
A few ink stains on the titlepage, otherwise in excellent condition.
Edit16 4991. USTC 813388. Refs: C.H. Clough, “Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani of 1505.” MLN 84, no. 1 (1969), 16-45; C. Fahy, “Nota sulla stampa dell’edizione aldina del 1505 degli “Asolani” di Pietro Bembo” Saggi di bibliografia testuale (Padova: Antenore, 1988).
OCLC: UCLA, Princeton, Chicago, Harvard, Lafayette. UK: BL..
