“CHAUCER, SHAKESPEARE AND DONNE ALL OWE A DEBT TO PETRARCH”: FINE INCUNABLE EDITION OF PETRARCH’S I TRIONFI, 1478

PETRARCH, Francesco. [I Trionfi con commentio di Bernardo Glicini da Siena]. Venice: Reynaldus of Nijmegen and Theodorus of Rendsburg, February 6, 1478. Small, thick folio, later full vellum rebacked, new endpapers. Collation: a10, b8, c6, e8, f10, g8, h-i6, k-J8, l6, m8, n6, o8, p-s6, t10, aa8, bb-ff6, gg10. Housed in custom clamshell box.

Early edition of the Trionfi, a touchstone for the literature and art of Renaissance Europe, containing Bernardo Lapini’s influential commentary, with extensive references to Filelfo’s commentary of 1446.

Petrarch was crowned poet laureate of Rome in 1341 and is generally considered the poet who ushered in the Renaissance. “He perfected the sonnet form and left behind a body of work in the Tuscan dialect of Italy, the beauty and sensibilities of which justly secured him the reputation as being the first modern lyric poet” (King’s College). Trionfi is an allegorical cycle composed in terza rima, the metrical form devised by Dante for the Divine Comedy. The poem is cautionary in nature and takes as its metaphor a triumphal procession of six allegorical figures— Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity— each victorious over its predecessor. Central to Trionfi (as well as to his later Canzoniere) is Petrarch’s unrequited love for a woman named Laura, whom he first saw on April 6, 1327 in the church of St. Claire in Avignon and who died of the plague in 1348. “The first two parts, Triumph of Love and the Triumph of Chastity, were probably written within the years 1340-1344, as a work complete in itself. But the death of Laura in 1348 led Petrarch to write the Triumph of Death which he followed soon after with the Triumph of Fame. The last two parts, the Triumph of Time and the Triumph of Eternity, were not written until the last few years of his life and Petrarch constantly reworked the earlier sections of the Trionfi so at the time of his death it was still in an unfinished state” (King’s College). “Commentaries on Petrarch’s poetry in early printed editions exemplify the kinds of cultural interaction and, at times, of social and political intervention that authorize such texts” (William J. Kennedy). The earliest commentary was composed by Antonio da Tempo in Padua sometime before the 1440 and was reworked by Francesco Filelfo in 1446. “In 1475 Bernardo da Pietro Lapini da Montalcino (also ‘Glicino’ or ‘Illicino’) published the most influential of the early commentaries, bound together with the Canzoniere. Lapini established a tradition of interpreting the poem as an allegory of the human soul” (Notre Dame University). First circulated in manuscript form and finally published in 1470, Trionfi had a huge influence on the literature and art of Renaissance Europe. “Guardiani estimates that, in the 16th century alone, over 300,000 short lyrics, mostly sonnets, were written, and that most of them were in imitation of Petrarch. In England, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Donne all owe a debt to Petrarch as do Spenser, Surrey, and Wyatt” (King’s College). Trionfi was also an inspiration to Shelley, whose Triumph of Life was also written in terza rima. In this 1478 edition, “the printers established a form followed in all later editions of separating the portions of [Petrarch’s] text in rectangular spaces, the commentary filling the rest of the page” (Fiske Petrarch Collection). Rubricated throughout with initial letters and section marks. Without first blank leaf a1; gathering k bound before gathering J. Texts in Italian. Proctor 4429. Goff P381. Thacher 297. Running titles supplied by a later hand; a few annotations and marginal glosses.

Occasional scattered light foxing to interior, with small worm-holes to first leaf and occasional worm-holing to inner margin, plus occasional light dampstaining. Paper repairs to inner margins of first two gatherings and to leaves k3 and k7. A lovely incunable, in excellent condition.