A. Gabrieli - Lettere di Complimenti Semplici - 1709

Angelo Gabrieli (Nobile Veneto).

Letters of Simple Compliments, by the Most Illustrious Signor Abbate Angelo Gabrieli, Nobile Veneto.
Divided into two parts… Reprinted again, with new additions… In Venice, for Ieppo Prodocimo, 1709

Format: small 8vo (13 x 7.5 cm), contemporary limp parchment binding (worn and stained by time, as visible in the photos, but structurally intact).

Two parts in one volume: pp. 178 + 62 blanks (or similar, according to the pagination indicated).

Good state of conservation for a small volume from the early eighteenth century intended for daily use: pages browned with typical halos and wear, but legible and complete. An authentic copy with signs of time testifying to its historical use.

A work of great Baroque success, it is a epistolary manual containing models of letters of compliments, thanks, condolences, best wishes, polite replies and, in the second part, amorous letters (“Leterre Amorose”) and duels of compliments. Gabrieli provides elegant, rhetorical and gallant examples suitable for the aristocratic and bourgeois society of the time, with dedications to ecclesiastical and noble figures. It also includes decorative elements such as friezes, initials and woodcut engravings (portraits, crowns, etc.).

This is a rare Venetian edition from 1709 of a classic of seventeenth- to eighteenth-century epistolary literature. Angelo Gabrieli’s Letters of Compliments underwent dozens of reprints from 1611 onward (especially in the 1630s–1640s), but copies from the early eighteenth century are very elusive on the market. This work represents a fundamental document for the study of the civility of good manners, courtly rhetoric and gallantry literature in the Baroque era, testifying to the social codes of late-republican Venice.

High collector’s value for its bibliographic rarity, the completeness of the two parts in a single volume and its historical-literary interest.

Ideal for collections of Italian old books, behavior manuals or the history of Venetian culture. A small jewel of popular yet cultivated 18th-century publishing.