BROCARDO, Antonio. Rime del Brocardo et d'altri authori, (Venice, no printer, 1538)
8vo. 83ff. (of 84, with the penultimate errata leaf but lacks the final blank). Fine woodcut imperial arms on title-page, in eighteenth century vellum, red leather label on spine, blue edges.
The first appearance in print of these three authors (edited by Francesco Amadi): Brocardo, Niccolò Delfino and Francesco Maria Molza and therefore the FIRST EDITION of Molza's celebrated poem La nimpha tiberina. Antonio Brocardo, the son of the celebrated philosopher Marino Brocardo, was born in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century and studied poetry under the saintly Trifone Gabriele. He was a friend of Sperone who introduced him in his Dialogo della Rettorica and also alludes to a sonnet (never published) in praise of courtesans in his Amori. Making the enormous mistake of trying to discredit the works of Bembo, then held in great respect in Venice and Padua, he died of a broken heart in 1531, brought about by the savage attacks on him, Pietro Aretino claiming to be the ringleader. Molza, on the other hand, was lionised by the entire Roman intelligentsia of the first half of the sixteenth century. Born in Modena in 1489 he soon moved to Rome where his poetry seems to have been a greater success than his love affairs, one of which almost ended in his death from a rival suitor and caused him to be disinherited by his father. From 1529 to 1535 he was in the court of Cardinal Ippolito de'Medici and after his death he passed to that of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He died in his home town in 1544. Tiraboschi says of him 'E veramente era il Molza degno di questo onore [Cardinal Farnese's proposed edition of Molza's Works in 1547], poichè egli è uno de' più colti rimatori di questo secolo, e all'eleganza dello stile unisce la nobiltà de' pensieri e la vivezza delle immagini'.
Censimento B3755; not in Adams; NUC locates the copies at Columbia and Yale; RLIN adds Michigan, Harvard and Folger; no further copy located by OCLC
£1700
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