[1 Ed.]D. Diderot - Il Padre di Famiglia - 1762

Denis Diderot – The Father of the Family.

Comedy in five acts in prose. Translated from French into Italian by Signor Michele Bocchini. Livorno, for Gio. Paolo Fantechi in Via Grande at the Sign of Truth, 1762.

[8], 132, [4] pp.; mm 180 × 100 circa (binding).

First Italian translation of the celebrated comedy by Denis Diderot Le Père de famille (1758), one of the masterpieces of Enlightenment bourgeois theatre and a reference point for European dramatic reform.

Published in Livorno just four years after the original French edition and only one year after the first Parisian performance (Comédie-Française, 1761), this edition documents the rapid diffusion of Diderot’s ideas in Italy.

Content
The five-act prose comedy stages the conflict between paternal authority and the passions of the children. The “Father of the Family” (Horace Conte di Obresson) opposes his son Fiorindo’s (Saint-Albin) love for the young Sofia, of lower social status and unknown origins. The Commendatore (uncle), a cynical and intriguing character, plots against the union. Through a series of twists typical of sentimental theatre, it is revealed that Sofia is in fact the Commendatore’s own granddaughter: the marriage can thus be celebrated, and the Father of the Family, a figure of virtue and reason, blesses the children. The play extols the values of the bourgeois family, sensibility, and natural morality, central themes of Diderot’s thought and of the Enlightenment.

The volume includes:
• Frontispiece with typographic star crest;
• Publisher’s dedication to Signora Amabilia Bocchini;
• List of characters;
• Complete text of the comedy (Acts I–V);
• Final blank pages.

Importance and rarity
This is the first Italian edition of Michele Bocchini’s translation, printed in Livorno – a relatively free printing center open to European novelties – by Gio. Paolo Fantechi. The work played a significant role in the Italian reception of French didactic and sentimental theatre and anticipated themes later taken up by Goldoni and by 19th-century bourgeois theatre.

Copies of this edition are rather rare on the antiquarian market: Italian public libraries hold only a few (including Labronica of Livorno and the Catholic University of Milan). The present copy is complete and presented in a fine contemporaneous full reddish-brown leather binding, richly gilded on both boards with double rules, floral and plant motifs, a braided border, and in the center a panel with a rocaille crest. Five-nerve spine with compartments ornamented (wear and discolorations typical of the period, but still pleasant in appearance). Interiors with light foxing and some usage stains, head of the title page restored, but overall in good condition.

A piece of notable interest for collectors of Enlightenment theatre, Livornese editions of the eighteenth century, and Italian decorative bindings.