Lettura [...], sopra un sonetto dell'Illustriss. Signor Marchese della Terza alla Divina Signora Marchesa del Vasto. Ove con nuove et chiare ragioni si pruova la somma perfettione delle DONNE [...] ove ancora cade occasione di nominare alcune Gentildonne delle più rare d'ogni terra principal dell'Italia

THE SUPERIORITY OF WOMEN AND A CATALOGUE OF ITALIAN CONTEMPORARY WOMEN

4to (183x134 mm). [6], 77 [i.e. 83], [1] leaves. Collation: a⁶ A-R⁴ S⁶ T⁴ V⁶. With the printer's device on the title page and at the end, and the half-page woodcut portrait of Maria d'Aragona at the age of thirty-four on l. V2r. Woodcut historiated initials. Roman and italic types. 18^th-century stiff vellum, lettering piece on spine, marbled edges. Inked-out ownership inscription on title page. On l. V2r Pietro Aretino's name has been censored causing some damage to the paper, marginal staining, more strongly on the final quires, margins cut short, overall a more than decent copy.

First edition of this commentary on a sonnet written by Giovanni Battista d'Azzia, marchese della Terza to Maria d'Aragona. The volume is dedicated to Giovanni Battista Gavardo (Venice, December 1, 1552) and is here extant in the variant issue with gathering V made of six leaves instead of eight. The first part is mostly dedicated to the praise of women, and the second to their physical and spiritual beauty (it contains a poem by Giovanni Battista Giraldi dedicated to Maria d'Aragona). This second part also contains a catalogue of nearly five-hundred contemporary Italian women arranged by towns (from Venice to Viterbo) remarkable for their beauty and virtue (cf. Androniki Dialeti, ‘Defenders' and ‘Enemies' of Women in early modern Italian ‘Querelle des Femmes'. Social and cultural Categories or empty Rhetoric?, Presented at “Gender and Power in the New Europe”, the 5th European Feminist Research Conference, August 20-24, 2003, Lund University, Sweden, p. 13).

At the end of the volume are printed other poems in praise of Maria d'Aragona and Giovanni Battista d'Azzia by Pietro Aretino, Girolamo Ferlito, Francesco Sansovino, Domenico Veniero, Bernardino Daniello, Girolamo Fenaruolo, Marco Silvio, Filippo Zaffiri, Bernardino Tomitano, Giacomo Zane, , Nicolò Eugenico, Giovan Giacomo Balbi, Vittorio Fenaruolo, Aurelio Grazia, Cesare de' Cesari, Decio Del Buono and by Ruscelli himself (cf. M. Rogers, Sonnets on Female Portraits from Renaissance North Italy, in: “Word and Image”, 2, 1986, pp. 291-305).

“Girolamo Ruscelli, viterbese di umili origini, fu uno dei più importanti editori e revisori editoriali del Cinquecento. Cominciò la sua attività a Roma, dove fondò l'Accademia dello Sdegno, quindi nel 1549 si trasferì a Venezia, dove lavorò per Sessa e Valgrisi. Nel 1552 presso Giovanni Griffio pubblicò una raccolta poetica intitolata Lettura sopra un sonetto dell'Illustriss. Signor Marchese della Terza, dedicandola a Maria d'Aragona, marchesa del Vasto. Grazie a questa abile operazione editoriale Ruscelli riuscì a inserirsi nell'agguerrito mondo editoriale veneziano e, nello stesso tempo, a procacciarsi amicizie e protezioni altolocate. Tre anni più tardi egli intraprese un'analoga, ma ancora più ambiziosa iniziativa editoriale, facendo stampare dal fido Plinio Pietrasanta (che era in realtà un semplice prestanome dietro il quale Ruscelli pubblicò diverse opere fino al 1555) una straordinaria antologia poetica plurilingue in lode di Giovanna d'Aragona Colonna, cognata della celebre poetessa Vittoria Colonna e sorella di Maria d'Aragona, marchesa del Vasto, intitolandola Del Tempio alla signora Donna Giovanna d'Aragona” (C. Di Filippo Bareggi, Il mestiere di scrivere: lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento, Rome, 1988, p. 78).

“At the opening meeting of the Dubbiosi in 1551, Ruscelli announced that a letter had come to him from Ferrante Carafa, who had requested, as had ‘many other judicious men' in Naples, that Maria d'Aragona, Marchesa del Vasto, be honored together with her sister Giovanna as the Tempio's dedicatees […] Suppressed in their own city, Carafa and the other members of Aragona's coterie wanted desperately to air their works publicly. If they could persuade one of the commercially successful presses in Venice to publish a collective tribute for their patron, the publication of their own poems in the resulting festschrift was virtually guaranteed. As the decree indicates, in 1551 the Dubbiosi had already launched a call for poetic contribution for an anthology entitled Del Tempio, which Ruscelli was to edit and his printer Pietrasanta would produce. But that same year, Ruscelli was under separate contract to publish a tribute to Maria d'Aragona under the title Lettura sopra un sonetto” (D. Robin, Publishing Women. Salons, the Presses, and the Counter-Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Chicago & London, 2007, pp. 46-47).

Maria d'Aragona, daughter of count Ferdinando di Catellana, natural son of Ferrante I of Aragon. She was greatly admired for her beauty. Her proud and arrogant character earned her the nickname of ‘Dragon'. She was married to Alfonso d'Avalos marchese del Vasto, one of the primary counselors of emperor Charles V. The marriage was at first an unhappy one because of the frequent infidelity of Alfonso. At Naples Maria was a member of the religious group of women led by Giulia Gonzaga and Vittoria Colonna around Juan de Valdes. She also had contacts with reformers as Pietro Carnesecchi and Bernardino Ochino. She moved to Milan when her husband became governor of that city. After Alfonso's death (1546) she became governor of Benevento, but shortly after retired to Naples to look after her seven children. Here she died in 1568. The present work also contains her only known portrait, showing her within a fine ornamental woodcut frame at the age of thirty-four (cf. B. Croce, Un sonetto di Aretino e un ritratto di Maria d'Aragona, in: “Aneddoti di varia letteratura”, I, Naples, 1953, pp. 359-365; see also D. Chiomenti Vassalli, Giovanna d'Aragona fra baroni, principi e sovrani del Ri- nascimento, Milan, 1987, pp. 148-149).

Girolamo Ruscelli, of humble origins, was born in Viterbo and became one of the leading editors of the Cinquecento. He was first active in Rome, where he founded the Accademia dello Sdegno and later settled in Venice working for such publishers as Sessa and Valgrisi. He was a friend of Bernardo and Torquato Tasso, Lodovico Dolce and Pietro Aretino, the last two were to become his rivals in several bitter controversies (cf. P. Procaccioli & P. Marini, eds. Girolamo Ruscelli. Dall'accademia alla corte alla tipografia, Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Viterbo 6-8 ottobre 2011, Rome, 2012, passim).

Edit 16, CNCE 47659; V. Gentili, Trasgressione tragica e norma domestica. Esemplari di tipologie femminili nella letteratura Europea, Rome, 1993, p. 49, no. 36; A. Iacono, Bibliografia di Girolamo Ruscelli. Le edizioni del Cinquecento, Manziana, 2011, pp. 31-33, no. 9; C. Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models, Ithaca, NY, 1990, p. 161; R. Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance, Urbana, IL, 1959, p. 408, no. 728; H. Sanson, Donne, precettistica e lingua nell'Italia del Cinquecento, Florence, 2007), p. 315; H. Vaganey, Le sonnet en Italie et en France, Lyon, 1903, p. CXXXI, no. 15.

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