Beschreibung:

TRISSINO, Giovanni Giorgio (1478-1550). La Italia liberata da Gothi . (Volume I:) Rome: Valerio and Luigi Dorico for Antonio Macro Vincentino, May 1547; (Volumes II & III:) Venice: Tolommeo Janicolo da Bressa, November 1548. 3 volumes in one, 8° (157 x 97 mm). Collation: (vol. I) * 8 A-Y 8 ; (vol. II) Aa-Zz 8 χ 2 ; (vol. III) aaa-zzz 8 2 χ 4 . 184; 186; 188 leaves (Y8, Zz7 and 2 χ4 blank). 2 inserted folding woodcuts: folding plan of the castrametazione di Belisario bound in before A1, folding bird's-eye-view map of Rome bound between χ1 and χ2. Title to vol. 1 within architectural woodcut border, the border repeated around large woodcut printer's device at end of 2nd and 3rd vols. (Zz8v and zzz8v). (Small marginal repairs to first 2 leaves, one affecting woodcut title border, scattered marginal foxing, light dampstaining at ends of vols. 1 and 3, both folding woodcuts torn and repaired around edges with slight loss to images, one or two marginal tears or repairs.) 19th-century diced russia over pasteboard, panelled in gilt and blind (upper cover detached, lower joint split). FIRST EDITION of Trissino's master work, an epic poem in unrhymed hendecasyllables, on the liberation of Italy from the Goths by Justinian and his general Belisarius in the sixth century. Trissino, a native of Vicenza, is now best known for his attempt to reform Italian orthography by the addition of 9 new letters that would better represent the sounds of the Italian language, set forth in his Epistola de le lettere nuovamente aggiunte ne la lingua italiana (Rome 1524), printed in Lodovico degli Arrighi's beautiful first italic. The extra letters, Greek epsilon and omega, are used here in a plain italic font. Little remains of Trissino's orthographical reforms other than the differentiation of u and v. This copy is complete with the often mutilated verses, hostile to Rome and the clergy, found on fols. 127v and 131v in vol. II. Variant issues are known of at least two quires in this edition, though their descriptions in the standard bibliographies remain unclear. In this copy the first quire of volume I appears in a variant type-setting, with the errata printed on *7r-*8r, leaving the final leaf of the volume blank (in other copies the errata is, according to Gamba, printed on that final leaf). Similarly, the final gathering of vol. II appears here in a variant setting, with Zz a gathering of 8 leaves, of which Zz7 is blank, followed by an unsigned gathering of two leaves at the end (flanking the inserted double-leaf map), these leaves containing the beginning and end of the text printed on the recto and verso of the inserted map (fol. χ1v contains the map key, continued on recto of the map, and χ2r contains the continuation of the vol. II errata begun on the verso of the map). Adams gives the collation of this quire in the Cambridge copy as Zz 10 with Zz10 blank; Gamba appears to cite this variant but his description is unclear. Cf. Adams T-954; Gamba 1713.