[Baruffaldi] - Rime Scelte de’ Poeti Ferraresi - 1713

FROM ARIOSTO TO THE ESTE COURT: THREE SECTIONS OF FERRARA POETRY IN THE RARE 1713 FIRST EDITION
One of the most curious literary enterprises of eighteenth-century Ferrara: two parts in one volume, from ancient rhymers to the “Living Ferrara Poets,” with historical-biographical notices, Eridano on the title page and the controversial attribution of the entire collection to Girolamo Baruffaldi.

Rare and fascinating first edition, published in Ferrara in 1713, of one of the most singular collections of the Estense literary tradition. The Selected Rhymes of the Ancient and Modern Ferrara Poets present themselves as a vast anthology intended to reconstruct through the centuries the poetic patrimony of the city, from the oldest rhymers to the authors contemporary with the compiler.
The work is divided ideologically into two great sections: the first devoted to Ferrara’s poets of the past, the second, introduced on p. 415 by its own title page Rimatori Ferraresi Viventi, aimed at contemporary production. The volume closes with the announced brief Historical Notices, which confer on the collection also the character of a bibliographic-biographical repository.
But behind this apparently traditional anthology lies a much more intriguing literary case. The work, published anonymously, is attributed by bibliographic tradition to Girolamo Baruffaldi (1675–1755), Ferrara-born priest, poet and scholar. Modern bibliographic sources catalog it directly under his name or as an work he curated.
Even more suggestive is the tradition according to which Baruffaldi did not merely collect and order others’ texts: an antiquarian bibliographic description goes so far as to claim that the poems attributed to the different rhymers would actually have come from his own pen. The work thus assumes the character of a sophisticated erudite hoax, as well as a monument to Ferrara’s literary memory.
The collection traverses Ferrara’s cultural universe—medieval, humanistic, and Renaissance—evoking religious, academic, and literary figures connected to the Este court and to Ariostan tradition. A book that is simultaneously an anthology, a local literary history, and a curious document of early eighteenth-century erudite culture.

WHY TO BUY
* FIRST EDITION – Rare original Ferrara edition of 1713.
* BARUFFALDI – Fascinating and controversial attribution to the great Ferrara scholar.
* ESTE COURT – Important testimony to Ferrara poetry and the Ariosto-oriented milieu.
* ERIDANO – Striking woodcut of the Po River and the second part dedicated to Rimatori Ferraresi Viventi.

MARKET VALUE
The work is not common on the antiquarian market. Considering the contemporaneous binding of the present copy, its completeness, overall good condition, and the growing interest stemming from the attribution to Baruffaldi, a reasonable antique-retail range can be placed around €480–600.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Rime scelte de' Poeti Ferraresi Antichi, e Moderni. Aggiuntevi nel fine alcune brevi Notizie Istoriche intorno ad essi. Ferrara, Eredi di Bernardino Pomatelli, Stampatori Episcopali, 1713.
Small-8°, 21 cm. Pages (2 white), (36), 608, (2 white).
Semi-floss-bound stiff boards, tone-on-tone. Bindings very slightly slack; some foxing and very light browning scattered, but overall a more than good copy.
Frontispiece adorned with a fine woodcut representation of the Po river, celebrated with the classical name Eridano.
Second internal title on p. 415: Rimatori Ferraresi Viventi, which introduces the second main section of the collection.
The bibliographic weight of the edition is also confirmed by the digitized copy, which presents the sequence of over six hundred pages of the work.
In ancient books, with a long history, there may be some imperfections not always noted in the description.

FULL TITLES & AUTHORS
Rime scelte de' Poeti Ferraresi Antichi, e Moderni. Aggiuntevi nel fine alcune brevi Notizie Istoriche intorno ad essi.
In Ferrara, per gli Eredi di Bernardino Pomatelli Impr. Episc., 1713.
Seconda parte:
Rimatori Ferraresi Viventi.
Opera pubblicata anonimamente, tradizionalmente attribuita a Girolamo Baruffaldi (Ferrara, 1675–1755), occasionally catalogued as a collection curated by him together with others. Modern cataloging is not entirely uniform: Google Books lists it as a collection of Ferrara poets “ed. by G. Baruffaldi and others,” while other bibliographic sources attribute it directly to Baruffaldi.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Ferrara represented one of the great literary workshops of Renaissance Europe between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Este court transformed the city into a center where poetry, theater, music, historiography, and humanistic culture could develop in direct relation to princely patronage.
By 1713 that season belonged to memory: the Este duchy had lost Ferrara in 1598 and the city had entered the Papal States. It is precisely in this context that reconstructing its own literary tradition assumed a particularly strong identity significance.
The Selected Rhymes thus construct a sort of civic poetic pantheon. The sequence of authors allows the reader to traverse, in spirit, centuries of Ferrara’s culture, from the oldest rhymers to figures linked to humanism and the Este court, up to writers contemporary to 1713.
Among the names in the collection are Anselmo da Ferrara, Ricobaldo, Leonello d’Este, Caterina Vegri, Bonaventura Pistofilo, Alberto Lollio, Giovanni Battista Pigna, Orazio Ariosto, Bianchino Bianchini, Fausto Braccaldi, and Ascanio Pio.
Some texts from the anthology are still used as testimony in modern biographical reconstructions: for example, the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani explicitly cites the 1713 Selected Rhymes in the discussion of verses attributed to Agostino Mosti, while the entry on Bartolomeo Ferrini refers to pages 74–79 of the collection.
The volume is therefore not merely a literary curiosity, but a source that has actually entered the tradition of studies on Ferrara’s culture.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Girolamo Baruffaldi was born in Ferrara in 1675 and died in the same city in 1755. An ecclesiastic, poet, historian, and scholar, he was one of the most characteristic personalities of Ferrara’s culture in the first half of the eighteenth century.
His activity was vast and perfectly reflected eighteenth-century erudition: poetry, local history, biographies of artists and scholars, antiquarian studies, and reconstruction of city memories.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The work appeared in Ferrara in 1713 at the Eredi di Bernardino Pomatelli, Episcopalian Printers, during a moment of particular vitality of Italian historical erudition.
This is the first edition; antiquarian sources also describe it as the original and sole edition.
The editorial structure is particularly interesting. After the part devoted to ancient and modern rhymers, at p. 415 a new title page for Rimatori Ferraresi Viventi appears: the collection thus shifts from a retrospective to a snapshot of the contemporary Ferrara literary society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Girolamo Baruffaldi, Rime scelte de’ poeti ferraresi antichi, e moderni. Aggiuntevi nel fine alcune brevi Notizie Istoriche intorno ad essi, Ferrara, Eredi di Bernardino Pomatelli, 1713.
Digitized copy from the Oxford University Library, available in the full reproduction of the 1713 edition.
Wikisource, digital index of the Ferrara edition of 1713, listed under “Autori vari.”
Modern academic bibliography: citation of the work under the name of G. Baruffaldi, Ferrara, Eredi di Bernardino Pomatelli, 1713.
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, entries relating to Ferrara authors and figures in which the 1713 collection is used as a source.