A. Poliziano - Stanze - Favola di Orfeo - Vita - Poesie - 1765

The most elegant Rooms of Messer Angelo Poliziano, now reduced by comparison with various ancient editions to their true text; with the addition of Orfeo, and of other vulgar things by the same Author no longer printed.
Padua, near Giuseppe Comino, 1765.

In-8° (170 × 110 mm bound), pp. [8], xlviii, 92.
Binding contemporary in green-yellow marbled cardstock with a dark spine; on the back, number “221” in green ink.

An edition curated and typographically elegant from the Cominino printshop, considered among the best of Venetian eighteenth century. It contains:
• the Stanzas for the Joust (begun for the joust of the Magnifico Giuliano di Piero de’ Medici), language text cited by the Crusca, revised by comparing multiple ancient editions;
• the Fable of Orpheus, here reduced “for the first time to its true and sincere lesson” with variants drawn from a membranous codex of the Chigiana Library;
• other unpublished vulgar poems by the same Author;
• the Life of M. Angelo Poliziano by the abbot Pierantonio Serassi (edited and expanded);
• notices and catalog of the main editions of the Stanzas gathered by Apostolo Zeno (corrected and enriched).

Title page with a typographic mark (pearl diver and motto), friezes and initial woodcut letters; dedication to the noble Count Paganino Antonio Sala, Padovan patrician.

This is the 1765 Comino edition, the last and most complete of the Padovan series (after 1728 and 1751). It collects for the first time in a single volume the Stanzas, Orpheus with apparatus of various manuscript variants, and some vulgar rhymes “no longer printed.” It constitutes a scholarly contribution of note to the textual tradition of Poliziano and remains a reference point for eighteenth-century studies on the humanist’s vulgar works. Copies on the market are not common, especially complete and in original binding.

Damaged copy: binding worn and faded, spine worn, wide signs of humidity and widespread foxing, stains and some leaves browned (as in the photo). Internals nonetheless legible and complete according to the collation.

Edition of undeniable interest for collectors of humanist literature and eighteenth-century Padovan printing.