Bernardo Tasso - Li tre libri delle lettere - 1559

TASSO, Bernardo (1493-1569).
The three books of the letters of M. Bernardo Tasso. To which, once again, the fourth book has been added.
In Venice, at P. Gironimo Giglio and associates, (1559).

In-8° (mm 150 × 100 circa). Leaves numbered: (8), 255, (4); overall pp. (16), 510, (9) circa.
Printer's mark on the title page (crest with lilies and a pyramid within a figurative frame with motto «Virtus nescit labi»), initials and woodcut embellishments, table of recipients at the end.

Binding in full brown leather, spine with raised bands and label and gold title «TASSO E TERE» (wear and losses on the cuffs and corners, as in the photo).

Definitive and complete edition of the first volume of Bernardo Tasso’s epistolary (father of Torquato), published under the author’s supervision in Venice.

It gathers the three books already published previously and adds for the first time the fourth book. The letters, addressed to princes, cardinals, literary men and friends (Annibal Caro, the Prince of Salerno, the Duke of Mantua, Mons. d’Aras and many others), constitute one of the most important and longest-lived examples of a “book of letters” of the Italian Cinquecento: a model of style, eloquence and morality, a precious source on court life, on intellectual networks, and on the author’s personal biography.

Esteemed sixteenth-century edition of notable philological and historical significance, considering the definitive edition of the first volume of the Letters. A sought-after work among collectors of Italian Renaissance literature and of Tasso’s foundational edition; complete copies in contemporary bindings are fairly rare on the antique market.

Genuine, complete copy, with the typical signs of time (browned paper, some stains and slight wear to the binding), but fully usable and of clear collecting and bibliographic interest.