Masini - Bologna Perlustrata - 1666

The Bologna Baroque Theater: Between Altars, Processions, and Architecture
Antonio Masini's 'La Bologna perlustrata,' published in 1666, is one of the most ambitious urban descriptions of Italian Seventeenth century. It is not a guide in the modern sense but a reading device of the city based on time, ritual, and memory. Bologna is traversed according to the liturgical and civil calendar, through festivals, churches, relics, devotional routes, public customs, and historical layers. Masini constructs a true symbolic topography: every urban space is charged with religious, political, and identity value. For the collector, the work represents a milestone in Bolognese bibliophilia: complex in structure, often divided into multiple parts and volumes, with material variables crucial for evaluation. For the historian, it remains a primary source of extraordinary density for the study of Baroque Bologna.
Market value
According to original copies from 1666, the market value is heavily influenced by completeness, presence of parts, condition of bindings, and iconographic apparatus. Good condition specimens are available online for 1,500 euros.

Physical description and condition
Folio format. The work is divided into three parts, bound in a single volume. Typographic features include initials and ornaments; engraved frontispiece, trimmed and repaired at the lower margin. Pages: Part I: (16), 748, (4). Part II: (8), 216. Part III: (8), 329, (2). A beautiful colored ex libris with arms.
Book with natural browning; tears, small tears, restorations with margin reduction but without loss of text; contemporary binding in parchment with signs of wear, reconstructed front cover hinge. Complete copy but with defects. In old books, with a multi-century history, some imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description.

Full title and author
Surveyed Bologna. The third impression, notably increased, which mentions every day in perpetuity the sacred and profane functions of the entire year.
Bologna, for the heir of Vittorio Benacci, 1666.
Antonio di Paolo Masini

Context and Significance
The explored Bologna is part of the great tradition of baroque urban descriptions, but it stands out for its systematic approach based on the calendar. The work does not organize the city by neighborhoods or monuments, but by commemorations, transforming time into an organizing principle of space. A deeply ritualized Bologna emerges, where civic identity is built through processions, celebrations, and historical memory. It is an essential source for the urban, religious, and cultural history of modern Italy, and a privileged reading tool for understanding the theatricality of civic power in the seventeenth century.

Biography of the Author
Antonio di Paolo Masini (Bologna, 1599–1691) was a silk merchant and a man of extensive culture, deeply embedded in the religious and civic fabric of the city. The surveyed Bologna represents the work of his maturity and the culmination of his scholarly activity, born from access to local sources, archives, and oral traditions. His writing combines documentary precision with a symbolic vision of the city.

Printing history and circulation
The work was printed in Bologna in 1666 by the heir of Vittorio Benacci. It is documented in several parts, sometimes bound together already in ancient times. In 1690, Masini published an addition with subsequent events. From the 20th century, the work has been reproduced in facsimile editions, clearly distinguishable from the original 17th-century version.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Cicognara, Leopoldo, Reasoned catalog of art and antiquity books, entry 4179.
Frati, Luigi, Bologna bibliography, entry 3351.
Lozzi, Bibliography of Italian municipalities, entry 679.
Piantanida, Manual of Italian bibliography, entry 700.
Fantuzzi, Notizie degli scrittori bolognesi, volume V, p. 357.
Olschki, Catalog, entry 11118.