Beschreibung:

(Books & Works on Paper including Aviation & Transport, 31st July 2020) Marcellino (Ammiano) Marcellino (Ammiano) Delle Guerre de romani. Tradotto per M. Remigio Fiorentino, FIRST and only EDITION, blank f. present, woodcut printer’s device on title and last verso, historiated initials featuring different sport scenes, one representing what seems to be a forerunner of tennis (p. 62), occasional spotting, heavier towards end, light browning, small library stamp on title, unreadable inscription to *2 tail, underlining and text corrections throughout, annotations largely faded, partly reading ‘’Descrizione del Egitto et della Francia/ Discorso curioso dil Autore sopra le cause …/ sentino i terremuoti. / De gli eclissi del sole et luna. / Del Aereo Celeste … chiamato oceano’’, later calf, spine gilt, a.e.r., marbled endpapers, rubbed, some worming, front hinge started, [Graesse I, 105; Gamba 1193; Bongi I, 277], 8vo, Gabriel Giolito, Venice, 1550. *** Italian translation of the late Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (4th c.) by the prolific humanist Remigio Nannini (1521-1581). The set of woodcut initials shows Giolito’s interest in the representation of sport. He published the following treatise by Antonio Scaino in 1555: ‘Trattato del giuoco della palla’, where the ‘tennis’ initial appears on p. 287. The work of 1555 is to be considered the first book on the game of tennis, dedicated to Alfonso d'Este and containing images of court types used for the game. The initial of Marcellino’s work could rightly be the first example of representation of tennis in miniature form.