Gli Heroici di Gio. Battista Pigna, a Donno Alfonso da Este II. Duca di Ferrara V

“SE NE TROVANO COPIE IN CARTA GRANDE ED IN CARTA TURCHINA” (S. BONGI)

4to (210x153 mm). 105, [19] pp. Collation: A-M⁴ N⁶ *⁴ **⁴. Complete with l. N6, a blank. Roman and italic type. Woodcut printer's device on the title page, a different device on l. N5v. Woodcut animated initials, head- and tailpieces. Leaf L4v within woodcut architectural border. Late 19^th-century brown cloth, spine with title in gilt lettering (slightly worn). Repaired worm track to the lower inner margin of several leaves (more strongly at the center of the volume) only occasionally slightly affecting the text, upper and lower margin a bit short, all in all a very good copy printed on blue paper from the library of Count Henry Chandon de Briailles (1898-1937; his bookplate on the recto of the front flyleaf).

First and only edition, dedicated by Pigna to Alfonso II d'Este (Ferrara, 15 August 1561), of this treatise on the heroic poem divided into three parts, followed by a poem of 49 ottava rima stanzas printed at the end of the volume, which narrates the true events of the duke's fall from his horse during a tournament.

“Gli heroici is a short treatise meant to introduce and explain Pigna's own heroic poem on the fall of Alfonso da Este in a tournament; the poem follows in the same volume. His choice of the subject was dictated, he says, by the fact that it contained in their proper form the ‘seven circumstances of all civil operations': a person, an action, relationship to great persons, an instrument, a place and occasion, a mode for the action, and an end (pp. 9-10). As a heroic poem, or an epic, this work will possess some qualities common to all poetry, some features peculiar to the epic, and some characteristics which it will share with the related form of tragedy. So for the most part the statement that it contains ‘one single action of one illustrious person' is general in its application, except that the ‘illustrious' relates it specifically to tragedy and the epic (p. 11) […] In Pigna's poem, the true event is the fall of Alfonso from his horse; the verisimilar consequence is that the guardian angels, headed by Mars, should have interceded with God for his life. This latter action constitutes the ‘imitation'. It will be noted that the action as described contains elements both of tragedy and of the epic: first, there is mutation of fortune which relates it to tragedy; second, there is a perfecting of the actual events which relate them to the epic. The emotional effects are equally mixed: pity and terror accompanied by the desire for honor (on the part of common men) and the desire for magnanimity (on the part of the great) […] Finally, the action combines elements of the active and contemplative lives; the active life is more proper to illustrious persons, the other to private citizens. Thus Pigna's poem leans more towards the active, which is both heroic and tragic (pp. 55-66) […] It is clear from what Pigna says in the three books of Gli heroici that theory has been made to serve two purposes, to provide the basis of the poem itself and to justify, after the fact, certain features of that same poem […]” (B. Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, Chicago, 1961, I, pp. 469-471).

“Nel 1561 [Pigna] pubblicò un'edizione dell'Ars poetica di Orazio (Venezia, V. Valgrisi), frutto degli intensi studi giovanili, e un trattato in tre libri dedicato ad Alfonso II, Gli heroici (Venezia, G. Giolito, 1561) intesi idealmente a saldare le riflessioni sul poema cavalleresco con il nuovo interesse per una nuova ‘poesia heroica', fondata su un fatto vero, cioè storico, nel quale interviene però il verosimile, sotto forma di trascendente o soprannaturale. La nuova idea di poesia è esemplificata dal poemetto celebrativo in 50 stanze intitolato L'heroico – ‘uno schizzo della vita heroica' (Gli heroici, p. 15) – intorno al quale si struttura il trattato. Il poemetto ha per soggetto la ‘horribile caduta' del principe Alfonso durante una giostra a Blois nel 1556: ‘il vero fu che il Principe cadesse a morte et non morisse […] et il verisimile è che gli Angeli custodi della sua vita incontinente si movessero, et che Marte principale tra essi li conducesse dinanzi a Dio, et parlasse per salute di esso Signore in modo tale che gli impetrasse la vita' (ibid., p. 12)” (S. Ritrovato, Nicolucci, Giovan Battista, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 78, 2013, s.v.).

Bongi states that there are copies of the Heroici printed by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari on large paper and on blue paper, one of which was in the hands of “cav. Andrea Tessier di Venezia”. The reference is to the library of the Venetian cavaliere Andrea Tessier (d. 1896), which was sold in Munich in 1900 by Jacques Rosenthal, and which contained a copy “tiré sur papier bleu” (Bibliothek Tessier. Katalog eins grossen Theils der Bibliotheken des verstorbenen Chevalier Andrea Tessier und des Marchese de***, lot 534). This copy may have been purchased by Count Raoul Chandon de Briailles and subsequently inherited by his son Henry, whose ex-libris is pasted on the flyleaf of the copy offered here. A blue-paper copy of Pigna's work was also sold in London in 1783, at the sale of the distinguished library collected by Thomas Croft: the catalogue Bibliotheca Croftsiana lists the entry “Pigna (Gio. Batt.) gli Heroici 4° perg. Vineg. per Gab. Giolito 1561. printed upon blue paper”.

Giovanni Battista Nicolucci called Il Pigna was born in Ferrara, where he began his studies with Lilio Gregorio Giraldi and Battista Guarini. At the age of twenty he became a teacher at the ‘Studio' in Ferrara and later secretary, chancellor and historiographer to Alfonso II d'Este. He was the author of Il duello (1554), the Romanzi (1554), a treatise on honour and the qualities of a gentleman, a history of the house of Este (1570), and an important treatise on stagecraft, Il Principe (1561), dedicated to duke Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, but originally written for Alfonso d'Este when he was a young prince (cf. R. Baldi, Giovan Battista Pigna: uno scrittore politico del Cinquecento, Genoa, 1983, passim).

Adams, P-1208; S. Bongi, Annali di Gabriel Giolito de' Ferrari da Trino di Monferrato stampatore in Venezia, Rome, 1895, II, p. 121; A. Nuovo-Ch. Coppens, I Giolito e la stampa nell'Italia del XVI secolo, Genève, 2005, p. 423; Edit 16, CNCE26327; Weinberg, op. cit., II, p. 1141.

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