De amplitudine: de uastatione: & de instauratione Vrbis Rauennæ.
Venice, Matteo Capcasa (di Codeca) 1489.
4to (216 x 157 mm.). [i], [45]p. Roman type, initial spaces blank.
18th-century English gilt-ruled calf, blind-stamped ornamental frame of volutes and blooms (expertly rebacked, corners worn), spine gilt (gilt nearly gone), remains of a paper library label.
First Edition. Written in the mid-15th century, On the Greatness, Destruction and Restoration of the City of Ravenna traces the city’s history in three parts. The first and longest treats the founding of the city with special attention to its decades as the capital of the Western Empire (402-76 C.E.). First Spretus describes Ravenna’s art and architecture, including the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the late antique church of San Vitale, the Basilica Sant’Apollinare at Classe and THE FAMOUS TOMB OF DANTE PRIOR TO ITS RELOCATION THE FOLLOWING CENTURY. The second part recounts the depredations of the tyrannical da Polenta family and the third their overthrow by the Venetians.
THE FIFTY-FIVE INSCRIPTIONS AT THE END SUPPORT THE ARGUMENT OF THE TEXT. The location of each is given and most abbreviations are expanded. This is the first such collection to appear in print, transforming the study of epigraphy from a humanist pastime to a serious field and shaped the presentation of inscriptions and their historiographical use.
After Spretus’ death, his son, Giambattista, entrusted his father’s manuscript to Jacopo Franchi, a Ravenna poet who edited the text for publication and composed the dedication. Spretus’ two original dedications to different Venetian patricians open and close the text.
One example in North American collections. A good copy (pale stains to lower outer corners, top edge of the final two leaves dusty), many outer and lower edges uncut, old manuscript library marks on the front endleaves.
¶Stenhouse, Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History: Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance 30; Wood, “Notation of Visual Information in the Earliest Archaeological Scholarship” in Word and Image 17 (2001) 102; Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità 4324; Lozzi, Biblioteca istorica della…Italia II: 393; Olschki, Incunabula typographica: A Descriptive Catalogue of…the Library of Henry Walters 377 (the other copy in the U.S.); ISTC is00688000; Goff S-688.
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