De Burigny - Histoire Générale de Sicile - 1745

GRANDI CARTE RIPIEGATE – PRIMA EDIZIONE – SICILIA GRECA, ROMANA, ARABA, NORMANNA E SPAGNOLA
Prima edizione della monumentale Histoire générale de Sicile di Jean Lévesque de Burigny, pubblicata all’Aia nel 1745 in due eleganti volumi. Una delle più ampie sintesi settecentesche dedicate alla storia dell’isola, l’opera segue le vicende della Sicilia dalle popolazioni più antiche e dalle colonizzazioni fenicia e greca sino agli avvenimenti politici contemporanei all’autore. Ampio spazio è riservato alla Sicilia classica, a Siracusa, alla cultura greca, alla poesia, alla retorica, alla filosofia, alla medicina e alle arti, per poi seguire sistematicamente le dominazioni romana, bizantina, araba, normanna, sveva, angioina, aragonese e spagnola. Particolarmente importante l’apparato cartografico, costituito da due grandi carte calcografiche più volte ripiegate: la Carte géographique de l’Isle et Royaume de Sicile, dedicata alla Sicilia moderna, e la Sicilia Vetus, che ricostruisce la geografia dell’isola nell’antichità. Le due carte permettono un affascinante confronto fra Sicilia classica e settecentesca e rappresentano uno degli elementi collezionistici più desiderabili dell’edizione. Completa il pregio dell’esemplare la sontuosa conservazione nelle due legature uniformi coeve in piena pelle marmorizzata, con dorsi a nervi riccamente decorati in oro, tasselli in marocchino e tagli marmorizzati.

WHY TO BUY
PRIMA EDIZIONE – 1745! Una delle grandi storie settecentesche dedicate interamente alla Sicilia.
GRANDI MAPPE RIPIEGATE! SICILIA VETUS e la Sicilia moderna riunite nello stesso esemplare.
DALLA MAGNA GRECIA AL SETTECENTO! Oltre duemila anni di storia politica, culturale e mediterranea.
DUE VOLUMI IN SPLENDIDA PELLE COEVA! Elegantemente integrati in una grande collezione di Sicilia e Grand Tour.

MARKET VALUE
The first edition of the Histoire générale de Sicile maintains solid interest among collectors of Sicily, Italian local history, cartography, and the Grand Tour. The factors most affecting valuation are the completeness of the two volumes, the presence of both large folded maps, the freshness of the maps, and the quality of the bindings. For a complete copy, with the two maps conserved and in elegant full original leather, a realistic retail value is in the €1,000-2,000 range, with potential for higher bids for particularly fresh copies, wide margins, or provenance of notable distinction.

PHYSICAL / CONDITION
Two volumes. Volume I: pp. (4), 14 nn., 512, (4). Volume II: pp. (4), 8 nn., 454, (2), 10 nn., (4). Two large folded engravings/maps of Sicily: one dedicated to the island’s contemporary geography and one titled Sicilia Vetus, related to ancient geography. Title pages printed in red and black with an engraved ornamental vignette. Elegant uniform contemporary binding in full marbled morocco leather, with gilded decorated spine compartments; red morocco spine labels with gold-impressed volumes titles and numbering. Multicolored marbled text edges and marbled fly-leaves with minor wear. Maps with occasional foxing, browning, and typical signs of time. The large folded maps may show folds, small tears, or minor marginal defects compatible with use. Elegant and desirable copy in its eighteenth-century attire. As with all old volumes, slight defects or restorations not explicitly mentioned may be present.

FULL TITLES & AUTHORS
Jean Lévesque de Burigny (1692-1785).
Histoire générale de Sicile.
A La Haye: chez Isaac Beauregard, et Pierre Gosse Junior et Comp., 1745.
PRIMA EDIZIONE.
Two volumes
Volume I: pp. (4), 14 nn., 512, (4).
Volume II: pp. (4), 8 nn., 454, (2), 10 nn., (4).
With two large folded engravings/maps: Carte géographique de l’Isle et Royaume de Sicile and Sicilia Vetus.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Jean Lévesque de Burigny (1692-1785) was a French historian and scholar, a representative of that eighteenth-century culture which sought to reconstruct the past through a systematic examination of classical, medieval, and modern sources. He dedicated himself with particular intensity to European and Mediterranean history and gained notoriety also through important biographical studies devoted to figures such as Erasmus, Grotius, and Bossuet. His erudite formation fully emerges in the Histoire générale de Sicile, where the island’s history is reconstructed not as peripheral but as an integral part of the political and cultural history of the Mediterranean. Burigny combines ancient sources, medieval chronicles, and modern documentation to follow the continuous transformations of a land long contested by major European and Mediterranean powers. The work thus represents one of the broadest syntheses on Sicily produced by eighteenth-century French historiography.

RARITY
The Histoire générale de Sicile of 1745 is not an extremely rare bibliographic title, but complete, high-quality copies are markedly more desirable than incomplete copies or those lacking the cartographic apparatus. The main discriminating factor is indeed the two large folded maps, which over centuries are prone to detachment, loss, or damage. The contemporaneous presence of Carte géographique de l’Isle et Royaume de Sicile and Sicilia Vetus allows full appreciation of the author’s historical-geographical project. Also particularly interesting is the preservation of the two volumes in the elegant original uniform full marbled leather bindings. The combination of first edition, two large maps, two complete volumes, and contemporary binding places this copy in the qualitatively most desirable tier of first-edition copies.

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE
Sicily holds a unique position in Mediterranean history, and Burigny builds his work around this extraordinary cultural stratification. Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Salians, Angevins, Aragonese, and Spaniards repeatedly transformed the island’s political and cultural identity. The narrative devotes ample space to Grecian Sicily, the Punic Wars, Siracusa and its tyrants, but also addresses the intellectual production of antiquity through sections on Sicilian poets, rhetoricians, philosophers, physicians, and artists. The work then proceeds through the Middle Ages and the early modern era, continually linking the island’s fortunes to major European geopolitical balances. The two maps reinforce this historical concept: Sicilia Vetus returns the territory of classical sources, while the modern map presents the island as known by the eighteenth-century traveler. The volume thus constitutes a significant source for the history of Sicily, cartography, Enlightenment historiography, and Grand Tour culture.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hoefer, Nouvelle Biographie Générale, entry on Jean Lévesque de Burigny.
Barbier, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes.
Bibliothèque nationale de France, bibliographic repertories dedicated to Jean Lévesque de Burigny.
Repertori bibliografici dedicated to the history of Sicily, eighteenth-century cartography, and Grand Tour literature.
Catalogues of major European libraries relating to the first edition of Histoire générale de Sicile of 1745.