FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF CELLINI’S LIFE, IN ORIGINAL BOARDS, 1812
CELLINI, Benvenuto. The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, A Florentine Artist. Philadelphia: R. and T. Desilver, 1812. Two volumes. Octavo, original printed boards, uncut. Housed in a custom chemise and half green morocco slipcase.
First American edition of Cellini’s famous autobiography, translated by Thomas Nugent.
“His banishment from Florence when he was 16, for brawling in the streets, set the pattern. At 23 he was condemned to death for skirmishing (which did not stop him from continuing to fight anyone who offended him); at 27 he turned soldier, defending a castle against an overwhelming enemy; at 30 he killed a man, and was saved from trial and execution only by the intervention of the Pope; at 34 he was once more forced to fly from the law after wounding an enemy, and he spent much of his 38th and 39th years in prison” (Parker, 1). Cellini was considered one of the greatest artists of his time, an expert goldsmith who became a noted sculptor, serving two popes, the de Medici family and French monarch Francis I. He wrote treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture. “It is, however, the Life which has won Cellini his immortality. After various vicissitudes, the manuscript disappeared during the 18th century. In 1805 in was discovered in a bookshop, and 20 years later, was bequeathed by its owner to the Laurentian Library at Florence, where it now is” (Bull, 13). “Modern scholarship has shown that in fact his account of life in Florence, Rome and Paris in the 1500s is remarkably accurate (apart from being the most complete account of the life of the time)” (Parker, 2). “Cellini personifies the spirit of the Italian Renaissance with his idealistic tendencies, his violence, his poetry and his foibles, and also his crimes” (Benezit II:618). Brothers Robert and Thomas De Silver, booksellers and bookbinders, established a publishing company in their native Philadelphia in 1812 (Tebbel I:384); Cellini’s Life was one of their first titles. First published in 1728 in Naples; Nugent’s translation, the first in English, first appeared in London in 1771. Shaw & Shoemaker 25042.
Scattered foxing to interiors. Front board of Volume I detached; front board of Volume II starting. Loss to printed paper spines. A very good copy of a scarce edition, rare in original boards.