Boccace

1590 · Best.-Nr. D6205 — Venice: appresso Fabio e Agostino Zoppini fratelli e Onofrio Farri compagni 1590. Hardcover. Very Good. 4to 210 x154mm. 8 544pp 92 index epithets glossary by Ruscelli. Collation: ast. 4; A-2M 8; 2N 2; 2O-2R 8; 2S 4. Woodcut printer’s device to title. Oval woodcut portrait of Luigi Groto Cieco d’Adria 1541-1585 facing first text page 10 woodcut illustrations numerous woodcut initials most historiated with griffins putti other figures or foliage and decorative chapter head- and tailpieces. Text in italic type; headlines chapter headings and marginalia in Roman. Printed marginalia. Early vellum; title with upper margin stained cancelled inscription and small tear some wear mostly on preliminaries; joints starting. Collection inscription in abbreviated Italian on front pastedown dated 1841 possibly from a Jesuit Society. Early bookseller’s stamp C. Simms of Manchester. Good large quarto copy of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron redacted by Luigi Groto 1541-1582 from the edition edited by Girolamo Ruscelli 1500’s-1556 and first published two years previously. Groto a minor Venetian writer reworked Boccaccio’s famous tale; retaining parts of the original parable but also creating his own tangents. Groto for instance created a predicament concerning a young man who finds himself confronted by three different ladies he has been secretly courting. When his deceit is discovered he must answer as to which of them is his true love. The lengthy narration of the amoroso imbroglio is Groto’s own literary stamp and he hoped with these revisions he would gain literary fame stating “I will give life and light to Boccaccio and he will do likewise for me . I will rescue him from darkness and burial and he in turn will rescue me from obscurity …” Ironically Groto’s retelling of the Decameron remains known for it deformations of the tale rather than it’s celebration. Each of the ten sections are preceded by an overview written by Ruscelli the well-known editor of Ptolemy’s Geographia of 1754 and a large woodcut illustration depicting narrative scenes of the Decameron tale. Brunet I 1002; STC Italy I: p.256. appresso Fabio e Agostino Zoppini fratelli e Onofrio Farri compagni hardcover