Pride and Penitence
RICCI, Vincenzo.
Geroglifici morali … Opera nuova, hora mandata in luce sopra molte virtù da seguirsi, e vitii da fuggirsi, utile a’ Predicatori, Oratori, ed altri studiosi … Naples, Giovanni Domenico Roncagliolo, 1626.
4to, pp. [lvi], 488; 33 large woodcuts depicting allegories of virtues and vices printed within woodcut borders, woodcut initials and tailpieces; some light foxing to first two quires with a few scattered spots elsewhere, marginal damp-staining to last few leaves, otherwise a very good copy; bound in nineteenth-century calf-backed boards with marbled sides and vellum tips, spine gilt and lettered directly in gilt, edges sprinkled red; a little rubbed; ink stamp ‘J. Parisi’ to title, seventeenth-century note ‘Giuseppe Nocita’(?) to p. 384.
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Geroglifici morali … Opera nuova, hora mandata in luce sopra molte virtù da seguirsi, e vitii da fuggirsi, utile a’ Predicatori, Oratori, ed altri studiosi …
Uncommon first edition of this work intended for the use of priests and scholars and inspired by Cesare Ripa’s highly influential Iconologia (1593), providing two hundred iconographical descriptions of personified vices and virtues and illustrated with thirty-three large woodcuts.
Dedicated to Francesco Boncompagni, named Cardinal deacon of Sant’Eustachio and Archbishop of Naples in 1626, Ricci’s ‘moral hieroglyphs’ follow Cesare Ripa in the alphabetical structure of the volume and the style of descriptions accompanying each allegorical figure; unlike Ripa’s Iconologia, however, the Geroglifici morali are firmly grounded in Scripture, adding such figures as ‘Vittoria di Santa Chiesa’, ‘Onnipotenza di Dio’, ‘Dio Incarnato’, ‘Predestinazione’, ‘Battesmo’, and ‘Eucharistia’. While Ripa represented ‘Accidia’ (Sloth) as an old woman holding a rope – symbolising the inability of the slothful to escape their vice – and a snail or turtle, Ricci’s Sloth appears here in moth-eaten clothes, her head resting in one hand while the other clutches a rosary, abandoned books strewn on the ground.
Library Hub finds only one copy in the UK (V&A).
USTC 4006730; Landwehr, Romanic 617; Praz, p. 470. Maniaci, ‘Predicazioni per immagini di Fra Vincenzo Ricci da San Severo e la fortuna artistica dei Geroglifici morali (Napoli 1626)’ in Rivista di letteratura religiosa italiana (2024), pp. 65–79.