Loredano - Lettere - 1650

THE MYSTERIOUS LABYRINTH OF VENETIAN BAROQUE, BETWEEN LOVE, ADVICE AND BETRAYALS
Fascinating and refined epistolary collection of the great Venetian writer Giovan Francesco Loredano, a central figure of the Academy of the Unknowns and a protagonist of libertine and baroque culture in seventeenth-century Italy. These Letters, divided into thematic “chapters” and gathered by Henrico Gibetto Cavaliere, constitute a true moral and psychological mirror of the Venetian aristocratic society of the XVII century: loves, condolences, political advice, witticisms, consolations and dedications intertwine in an exquisitely elegant and theatrical prose. The exemplar preserves a suggestive contemporaneous binding in soft parchment, heavily worn, almost worn away by the long circulation of the volume, an element that returns the material concreteness of a book actually read and used in the heart of the baroque era.
MARKET VALUE
The epistolary collections of Giovan Francesco Loredano, especially in the complete sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Milanese and Venetian editions with indices, are now sought after both for literary value and for the author’s historical role in Italian libertine culture. Authentic copies in contemporary binding, even with pronounced signs of use as in the present case, can reach values between 400 and 600 euros, with higher sums for copies particularly fresh or of illustrious provenance.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Contemporary binding in soft parchment, losses and structural defects to the spine. Typographic title page ornately adorned with an woodcut emblematic figure within a medallion. Leaves with some physiological browning and foxing, wear marks and signs of use. In old books, with a centuries-long history, some imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description. Pp. 22nn; 530; (2).

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Letters of Signor Gio. Francesco Loredano noble Veneto.
In Milan, For Gio. Pietro Cardi & Gioseffo Marelli.
Giovan Francesco Loredano.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
In seventeenth-century Italy, the letter becomes much more than a simple communication tool: it takes on a literary, theatrical, and moral function. Loredano’s epistolary collections represent one of the apexes of this transformation. A Venetian aristocrat, founder of the Academy of the Unknowns and a writer deeply immersed in baroque culture, Loredano constructs in his letters an universe made of rhetorical artifice, psychological introspection, and subtle moral ambiguity. The thematic organization of the work — loves, congratulations, consolations, discourses, witticisms, exhortations — transforms the volume into a kind of universal repertoire of human passions and social conventions of the Seicento. A reader of the time could use these letters as a stylistic model, but also as a practical guide for aristocratic and diplomatic life. Particularly evocative is the typographic mark on the frontispiece: an allegorical figure inscribed within a decorative medallion, typical of Baroque editorial symbolism, where fortune, eloquence and wisdom merge into an emblematic language of strong visual impact. The entire volume perfectly captures the seventeenth-century taste for the theatricality of the word and for the literary construction of social identity.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Giovan Francesco Loredano (1607–1661) was a writer, Venetian patrician and founder of the Academy of the Unknowns, one of the most influential intellectual circles of the European Baroque. A central figure of Venetian baroque and libertine culture, he authored novels, letters, moral works and political texts. Through the Academy of the Unknowns he exerted enormous influence on literature, theater and even Venetian opera in the seventeenth century.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
Loredano’s Letters enjoyed wide diffusion during the Seicento thanks to their extraordinary success in Italian aristocratic and literary circles. The Milan editions printed by Gio. Pietro Cardi and Gioseffo Marelli attest to the rapid circulation of the author’s works even outside Venice. These volumes were frequently read, annotated, and used as repertoires of epistolary style, which is why copies authentically preserved in contemporary bindings often show evident signs of use, nowadays considered an integral part of their material history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
ICCU / OPAC SBN: copies to be verified.
EDIT16, bibliographic card to be verified.
USTC, Universal Short Title Catalogue, editions of Loredano’s Letters.
Melzi, Dictionary of anonymous and pseudonymous works.
Gamba, Series of language texts.
Croce, History of the Baroque era in Italy.
Getto, The Baroque in Italian literature.
Brugnolo, studies on seventeenth-century Venetian epistolary.
Infelise, Venetian publishing in the Seicento.
Catalogues of antiquarians and inventories of Italian Baroque editions of the XVII century.