Gio: Fr. Loredano - Bizzarrie Academiche - 1684

Bizzarrie Accademiche di Gio. Francesco Loredano, Nobile Veneto. Parte Prima e Seconda. Venezia, Appresso Steffano Curti, 1684.

Edition: complete in one volume of the two parts of the Bizzarrie Accademiche di Giovanni Francesco Loredano (or Loredan, 1607-1661), Venetian nobleman, writer and founder in 1630 of the Accademia degli Incogniti, one of the most influential literary and intellectual circles in seventeenth-century Venice.

In-12° (approximately 13.5 × 7 cm). Pp. 315, [1]; [8], 13-248, [16]. Two independent title pages within a typographic frame, both with a wood-engraved vignette depicting a basket of fruit and flowers. Roman and italic type; headings, endpieces, and initials ornate. Contemporary limp parchment binding (or “alla veneziana”), with a handwritten title on the spine ("Bizzarrie di Loredano" or similar).

Contents
• Part One: collection of discourses and academic “bizzarrie” of paradoxical, moral, amorous, and erudite character (e.g., "Whether blushing is a sign of virtue", "Why Mars, from ancient times, is an feigned lover", "The prejudices of good breeding", "The sacrilegious loves", "Why doctors procure to have a large beard", etc.). It also includes other works by the same author: the Death of Volestain, the Life of the Cavalier Marino, and an Ode by Pietro Michieli, Venetian nobleman.
• Part Two: further academic discourses, with the addition of the Ragguagli di Parnaso and De Gli Amori Infelici (Narrative in prose of Piramo and Tisbe’s mythical episode).
Bizzarrie represent one of the most typical and long-lasting expressions of the “incognita” culture: witty discourses, often paradoxical or “bizarre,” in which classical and modern erudition blend with gallant themes, morals, and manners, in accordance with the libertine and worldly taste of the Venetian Academy.

Conditions
Paper with widespread foxing and browning; signs of woodworm in the final portion along the fore-edge. Ancient parchment binding, worn and yellowed, with some defects and traces of centuries of use, but still solid. Ownership inscription on the frontispiece of Part One: “Ex Libris Petri Stephani Speranza”.

Importance and rarity
Giovan Francesco Loredano was a central figure in Venetian literary and political life in the seventeenth century: patrician, magistrate, founder and “prince” of the Incogniti. His Bizzarrie Accademiche, issued from the 1630s and reprinted several times during the century, constitute one of the most vivid and representative testimonies of Baroque Venetian academic culture, midway between treatise-writing, manners literature, and intellectual divertissement.

The Curti edition of 1684, in a compact pocket format, is one of the late seventeenth century’s last, and it brings together both parts with the appendices. Not common complete and in contemporary binding; copies with provenance notes from the seventeenth or eighteenth century (such as the present one) are particularly sought after by collectors of Venetian books and the history of academies.

A copy of definite bibliographical and collecting interest, authentic testimony to the lively literary culture of the Serenissima.