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an old brown book with gold trimmings on the front coveran old book with a picture of a man with a beardan old book with a black and white image of a cross on it
ALDE

25 - FRANCO (Niccolò). *La Philena. Historia amorosa ultimamente …
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Estimate €1,500 - €2,000
Sale commission
Description
FRANCO (Niccolò). *La Philena. Historia amorosa ultimamente composta*. Mantua, Giacomo Ruffinelli, 1547. Small 8vo, olive morocco, triple gilt rule, coat of arms in the centre, spine decorated with a repeated crowned monogram, interior lace, gilt edges (17th-century binding). A rare first edition of this lengthy adaptation of Boccaccio’s *La Fiammetta*, a psychological and moral novel in twelve books in which the author makes frequent references to Dante. The edition is dedicated to Giovanni Giuseppe Cantelmi, Count of Popoli, who died in 1560. A woodcut portrait of the author adorns the title page and the verso of the final leaf. Niccolò Franco (1505–1570) made his name chiefly through his satirical and licentious works. He was very close to Aretino (1492–1556), to whom his knowledge of Latin and Greek was apparently invaluable. However, a falling-out between them was severe enough to force Franco to leave Venice. In the commentaries he published in the early 1540s on the *Priapea* – then attributed to Virgil – he attacked the author of the *Ragionamenti* with a series of vehement sonnets. Nor did he confine his attacks to him alone; his satirical talent, as much as his temperament, earned him enemies right up to the highest echelons of the papal administration. So much so that, despite his patrons, Paul V – against whom he had launched a scathing epigram – had him arrested. Tried in February 1570 and sentenced to hanging, he was executed on 11 March. A very fine copy in morocco leather bearing the coat of arms and cipher of Charron de Ménars. A judge wearing a mortarboard at the Parliament of Paris and brother-in-law of the great Colbert, Jean-Jacques Charron (1643–1718), Marquis de Ménars, built up one of the richest libraries of his time. In 1680, he purchased the entire precious library of the de Thou family, thereby saving it from being broken up; he sold it to Cardinal de Rohan in 1706, and the latter bequeathed it, upon his death, to his nephew Charles de Rohan (1715–1787), Prince of Soubise, who expanded it considerably. His vast collection of books was finally dispersed in 1789. The shelf mark of the Prince of Soubise’s library is written in ink on the reverse of the first endpaper. A fine, perfectly preserved copy. An old annotation, written in ink in French, at the foot of f. B3. From the library of Eduardo Juan Bullrich (1952, no. 158), with ex-libris. BM Italian, p. 279 -- OHR, 185/1 and 3.
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About the sale Fine antique books – A library in the Languedoc
Auction location
Auction time 10/20/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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