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Descrizione della battaglia del Ponte. Frà Abido, e Sesto nell’Hellesponto. Festa rappresentata in Arno, il dì 25. di Luglio 1618
Libretto of the entertainment “La Battaglia del Ponte” performed on the Arno River during celebration of the Feast of Saint James, on 25 July 1618. The designer of the festival machinery was Giulio Parigi, designer also of floats built for Ferdinando Saracinelli’s “Arrivo d’Amore in Toscana” enacted on the same feast day in 1615, and for Andrea Salvadori’s “Battaglia tra tessitori e tintori” performed in 1619 (those floats are documented in prints by Jacques Callot). Regrettably, no visual documentation survives of Parigi’s apparati for “La Battaglia del Ponte”.
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- Subjects
- Festival books and prints - Italy - Florence, 1618
- Literature, Italian - Libretti - Early works to 1800
- Authors/Creators
- Adimari, Alessandro, 1579-1649
- Artists/Illustrators
- Parigi, Giulio, 1571-1635
- Printers/Publishers
- Pignoni, Zanobi, active 1612-1643
- Owners
- Feltrinelli, Giannalisa Gianzana, 1903-1981
- Ginori Conti, Piero, principe di Trevignano, 1865-1939
[Adimari, Alessandro]
Florence 1579 – 1649 Florence
Descrizione della battaglia del Ponte. Frà Abido, e Sesto nell’Hellesponto. Festa rappresentata in Arno, il dì 25. di Luglio 1618.
Florence, Zanobi Pignoni, 1618
quarto (200 × 145 mm), (4) ff. unsigned; not paginated or foliated. Woodcut device on title-page.
provenance prince Piero Ginori Conti (1865–1939), his heraldic exlibris1 — Giannalisa Feltrinelli (1903–1981) — Christie’s South Kensington Ltd., ‘The Giannalisa Feltrinelli library, Part six: the arts, fêtes and history of Italy, literature of the Grand Tour’, London, 2 June 1998, lot 1270
Light spotting and browning.
binding early 20th-century boards utilising earlier decorative gilt paper.
Libretto of the entertainment La Battaglia del Ponte performed on the Arno River during celebration of the Feast of Saint James, on 25 July 1618. This was a ‘popular’ festival (the following year it attracted 30,000 spectators), paid for and controlled by Grand Duke Cosimo ii de Medici, which usually combined a theatrical performance with a palio delle fregate (race of the frigates) and pyrotechnical displays.2
The designer of the festival machinery was Giulio Parigi, designer also of floats built for Ferdinando Saracinelli’s Arrivo d’Amore in Toscana enacted on the same feast day in 1615, and for Andrea Salvadori’s Battaglia tra tessitori e tintori performed in 1619 (those floats are documented in prints by Jacques Callot).3 Regrettably, no visual documentation survives of Parigi’s apparati for La Battaglia del Ponte.4
Six other copies are known to the writer
● Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, 1026.5 (OPAC) ● Florence, Biblioteca Moreniana, A–2576 (Collocazione: 151 2)5 ● Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Cicognara iv.m.105 (int.7)6 ● Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, MISC 1016.019 ● Washington, dc, Folger Library7 ● Unlocated8
references Giovanni Cinelli Calvoli, Biblioteca volante, edited by Dionigi Andrea Sancassani (Venice 1747), iv, p.428; Pasquale Augusto Bigazzi, Firenze e Contorni: manuale bibliografico e bibliobiografico delle principali opere e scritture sulla storia, i monumenti, le arti, le istituzioni, le famiglie, gli uomini illustri, ec., della città e Contorni (Florence 1893), p.123, no. 3434; Libreria Vinciana (Milan), Autori italiani del ’600, edited by Sandro Piantanida, Lamberto Diotallevi, Giancarlo Livraghi (Milan 1948–1951), p.43 no. 175
1. Egisto Bragaglia, Gli ex libris italiani dalle origini alla fine del’Ottocento (Milan 1993), no. 2331.
2. Robert Lamar Weaver and Norma Weaver, A chronology of music in the Florentine theater, 1590-1750: operas, prologues, finales, intermezzos and plays with incidental music (Detroit 1978), p.101.
3. See Arthur R. Blumenthal, Theater Art of the Medici, catalogue of the exhibition held at Dartmouth College Museum and Galleries, 10 October–7 December 1980 (Hanover, nh & London 1980), pp.92–95, 125–127.
4. Arthur R. Blumenthal, Giulio Parigi’s stage designs: Florence and the early Baroque spectacle, Garland Outstanding Dissertations in the Fine Arts (New York 1986), pp.185–186, 219, 382.
5. Domenico Moreni, Bibliografia storico-ragionata della Toscana (Florence 1805), i, p.322; Angelo Solerti, Musica, ballo e drammatica alla corte Medicea dal 1600 al 1637 (Florence 1905), pp.136–138 (text credited to Andrea Salvadori by Cesare Tinghi, but an annotation in the Biblioteca Moreniana copy attributes it to Adimari).
6. Leopoldo Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal conte Cicognara (Pisa 1821), no. 1425; cf. National Art Library (Great Britain), Universal catalogue of books on art (London 1870), i, p.569 (citing Cicognara).
7. Louise Clubb, Italian plays (1500–1700) in the Folger Library (Florence 1968), no. 749.
8. With the booksellers Mediolanum Libreria Antiquaria di Luca Pozzi (Milan), in April 2012 (price Euros €1800).