Battista Guarini - Il Pastor Fido - 1602

The work depicted in the images is Il Pastor Fido by Battista Guarini, a masterpiece of Renaissance pastoral theater; the copy clearly shows on the title page and the spine the imprint of the Venice publisher Giovanni Battista Ciotti, bearing the date 1602.
During the seventeenth century, the enormous public success of Guarini's work led several printers to issue pirate editions or counterfeit reprints, faithfully reproducing the Venetian Ciotti 1602 title page with the famous copper engravings.
The revealing element of this specific print run lies precisely in the phrase "XXVII impressione" printed on the title page, whereas the authentic and original edition licensed by Ciotti in 1602 bore the phrase "XX impressione". This numerical discrepancy, together with some differences in pagination and in the woodblocks or engravings used for the illustrations compared to the first official edition, confirms the nature of an abusive reprint or later counterfeiting. A fascinating curiosity concerns the dedication to Prince Vincenzo Gonzaga and the structure of the work, which includes the famous Compendio della Poesia Tragicomica, the text with which Guarini defended himself against the furious polemics of critics of the time who accused the new genre of tragedy-comedy of violating Aristotle's classical rules.

In 8°, pp- 250 (but: 520), + 64. Half leather