Beschreibung:

DONI, Anton Francesco (1513-74). I marmi . Venice: Francesco Marcolini 1552-53. 4 parts in one, 4° (207 x 150 mm). Collation: A-X 4 Aa-Pp 4 a 4 B-X 4 AA-MM 4 . 260 leaves, the 4 parts separately paginated. Italic type. Woodcuts: devices on last pages of each part within full-page scrollwork borders, title of part 1 with large globe device (from Doni's I mondi , published at the same time), parts 2-4 each with a different device, 44 woodcuts, including 3 repeats, of various sizes, including a portrait of the author on A4v of parts 1 and 3 and other portraits of contemporary Florentine writers and cultural figures, the smaller cuts set within ornamental borders of scrollwork and grotesques, the borders repeated for a few section headings, woodcut ornaments and historiated initials. (Dampstaining at beginning and end, some marginal foxing, last leaf torn with slight loss to woodcut on verso, marginal tear to Pp1.) Early 19th-century English dark blue straight-grained morocco, covers with blind-tooled floral border within wide gilt fillet border, spine in six compartments tooled in blind and gilt panelled, gilt edges, partially red-stained (upper joint cracked, slight wear to extremities). Provenance : unsigned 19th-century inscriptions in Latin and French on front flyleaf concerning the edition and the copy; P. Ashburnham, bookplate; Major Byron Palmes, bookplate. FIRST EDITION of one of the eccentric Doni's more unconventional works, consisting of a series of imaginary dialogues involving over 100 different characters, some real, some fictive, who are portrayed conversing on the marble steps ( I marmi ) of the Duomo of Florence on a wide range of unrelated topics. These include, in part 2, the invention of printing (Aa4r) and the accomplishments of Aldus Manutius lauded on fols. Cc2v-4r for his erudition, sterling character, and services rendered to literature. Some of the characters, who include a few marble statutes, voice protests over the unequal distribution of wealth in the city; others recite entire novelle or poems. Doni, a former priest, improvised his most famous books, I marmi and I mondi , which he wrote in the middle of Marcolini's printing shop, handing the compositor his copy as it flowed from his pen, and illustrating the works at whim with blocks from his own collection and from Marcolini's stock. Thus portraits of real individuals (including a striking profile of the printer himself, on part 4, page 15) are randomly intermingled with blocks for editions of Ariosto, inherited from other printers, or with a stray woodcut of a fool astride a crayfish (part 4, page 19), originally cut for an edition of Brant's Ship of Fools . Adams D-824; Gamba 1368; Harvard/Mortimer Italian 165; Ruth Mortimer, "The Author's Image: Italian Sixteenth-Century Printed Portraits", Harvard Library Bulletin , vol. 7, no. 2 (Summer 1996), pp. 45-46.