BEMBO, Pietro Le prose di M. Pietro Bembo. Nelle quali si ragiona della volgar lingua, scritte al Cardinal de’ Medici, che poi fu creato sommo Pontefice, & detto Papa Clemente VII. Venice: Nicolo Moretti, 1586
8vo., [xx], 128 ff.
Woodcut printer's device to title, historiated chapter initials. Contemporary limp vellum with remnants of ties, title in manuscript to spine, small hole in vellum at spine, otherwise an excellent copy from the library of noted Shakespeare scholar Charles Tyler Prouty with his bookplate as well as his initials to upper corner of leaf 99. Semi-calligraphic initial B and P on title, and a small bookplate of Jacobus Manzonus on front paste-down. , Later edition of a milestone in the development of the Italian language, in which Bembo defends the Tuscan vernacular as a literary language. Bembo (1470-1547) was one of the finest Latin stylists of his day, albeit in his writings as a papal secretary he belonged to the faction known as Ciceronians: those who felt that only words and phrases used by Cicero ought to be included in composition. His interests however, went beyond Latin; he is also remembered for his Aldine editions of Petrach (1501) and Dante (1502).
$US850
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