Recently acquired rare and antiquarian books - August/September 2010

Here are some items that we recently added to Stanford's collection, all Italian this time:

Roberti, Giovanni Battista. Lettera Sul Prendere, Come Dicono, L'aria Et Il Sole. S.l, 1775.
Just in time for our Indian summer, an 18^th century treatise on the benefits of sunbathing…

CAVALCANTI, Andrea. Esequie del serenissimo principe Francesco, celebrate in Fiorenza dal serenissimo Ferdinando II, granduca di Toscana, svo fratello, nell'insigne collegiata di S. Lorenzo il dì 30 d'agosto 1634. Florence: Per Gio: Batista Landini, 1634. 4to, 52 pp. Woodcut printer's device on title-page, engraved folding plate, full page portrait and 8 text engravings by Stefano della Bella.

Francesco II de’ Medici, one of the eight children of Cosimo II, died of the plague in 1634, after a very short military career. Not much is known of his life. This work is more interesting for the account that it offers of the staging and symbolism of seventeenth-century funeral celebrations, with images of the catafalque, emblems, and a portrait of the dead. Andrea Cavalcanti was a member of an important Florentine family allied with the Medici’s. A member of the Accademia della Crusca, bibliophile and author, he wrote several other accounts of obsequies, on the funerals of King Louis XIII of France, and Ferdinando II, as well as works of biography, and was a member of the Florentine intellectual circles of the era.

Montesquieu in italiano

MONTESQUIEU, C.-L. Spirito delle leggi del signore di Montesquieu con le note dell'Abate Antonio Genovesi. Tomo Primo [-Tomo Quarto]. Napoli, Domenico Terres, (1777). With portraits of Montesquieu and Genovesi. Four volumes bound in two. 

An earlier edition of Montesquieu's masterpiece had been published in 1750 but that publication suffered severely from censorship. The publisher Domenico Terres, who had Genovesi's manuscript with his comments, obtained permission to publish the book with the comments. Added to the book were also d'Alembert's Elogio del Sig. Presidente di Montesquieu and his Analisi dello Spirito del Leggi Per servire di continuazione all'Elogio, Montesquieu's Discorso ..... nell'essere amesso all'Academia Francese, the Difensa dello spirito delle leggi, and Voltaire's Ringraziamento sincero ad un uomo caritatevole. The 4th volume contains a very extensive index (pp. 149-366). Antonio Genovesi (1713-1769) was an Italian philosopher and economist. He was much interested in theology and in philosophy, his interest in economics came later and together these formed the intellectual triangle within which all his studies were carried out. This diversity allowed him to grasp the import of the new culture of the Enlightenment and to denounce the cultural and social backwardness of the Kingdom of Naples (that is to say, of southern Italy), with unsurpassed orginality. He read and studied Vico, Cartesianism and was drawn to John Locke and the freethinkers. (adapted from vendor’s notes (A. Gerits) )