MARCHESE, Duca Annibale.
Tragedie Cristiane.
Naples, Felice Mosca, 1729. 2 volumes in 1. Large 8vo. With two title-pages in red and black, an engraved frontispiece by Jeremias Jakob Sedelmayr after Francesco Solimena, an engraved author's portrait by Antonio Baldi and 11 engraved plates by Sedelmayr and Baldi after Solimena, accompanying the 10 tragedies and the dedication. Also with some engraved initials, woodcut tailpieces and 40 pages of engraved polyphonic music for the choruses. Contemporary gold-tooled brown goatskin morocco, gilt and gauffered edges with an intricate fore-edge painting, incorporating both a closed and fanned design for the fore-edge. The head and foot edges are painted with floral and botanical designs. [4], [16], 502; [4], 504, [2]; pp. plus 40 pp. of engraved music.
€ 8,500
First and only edition of a collection of 10 Italian Christian tragedies, written by the Naples poet Duca Annibale Marchese (1687-1753). It is illustrated with beautiful engravings after the important Italian baroque painter Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) and complemented with the engraved music for the choruses of the five tragedies in the second volume, composed by some of the most foremost Italian and German 17th- and 18th-century composers, like Tommaso Carapella (1655-1736), Domenico Sarro (1679-1744), Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730) Francesco Durante (1684-1755), Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783), Nicola Fago (1677-1745) and more.
With the armorial bookplate of James Whittle and another bookplate of the California collector and philanthropist Dorothy Jayne Pedrini Shea, both on the front paste-down. Also with the bookplate of Randall J. Moskovitz M.D. loosely inserted, whose estate holds many books with fore-edge paintings. Binding only slightly worn around the edges and corners, a few wormholes on the spine. Some browning and foxing, some marginal water stains in the foot margin of the first few leaves (the preliminaries; not affecting the plates). Overall in good condition. A fascinating binding with two bright and detailed fore-edge paintings on the fore-edge, one when it is closed and another when it is fanned open. ICCU, NAPE 006664 & 006666; for the emblem ofthe fore-edge painting: Emblemata: Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, col. 165; Bernhard Schirg, "The Daphnic fate of Camerarius; Swedens first printed emblem book revealed in Olof Rudbeck the youngers botanical dissertation (1686)", in: Intersections: interdisciplinary studies in early modern Europe, 50 (2017): Emblems and the natural world, p. 564, no. 11.
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