Provincial Printing in Piedmont
VALERIUS MAXIMUS, Gaius.
Dictorum factorumque memorabilium exempla. Adiecto indice propriorum nominum, rerumque memoria dignarum locupletissimo. Carmagnola, Marcantonio Bellone, 1607.
8vo, ff. 247, [8], [1 (blank)]; woodcut printer’s device to title, woodcut initials; title neatly restored at outer margin with no loss to text, small stain to lower corner of first and last few leaves, historiated initial on A4r censored(?) in ink, otherwise a very good copy; bound in contemporary vellum, tail-edge and spine lettered in ink, remnants of two pairs of tawed ties, spine lined with waste from printed music; binding somewhat soiled; early inscription ‘Collegii Scti Alexandri’ to title.
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Dictorum factorumque memorabilium exempla. Adiecto indice propriorum nominum, rerumque memoria dignarum locupletissimo.
Rare edition of Valerius Maximus, provincially printed at Carmagnola in Piedmont, then part of the Duchy of Savoy.
A mainstay of the medieval and Renaissance curriculum, Gaius Valerius Maximus compiled his nine books of ‘memorable deeds and sayings’ in the first century AD, during the reign of Tiberius, providing more than a thousand episodes arranged thematically, demonstrating contemporary attitudes and behaviour, and encompassing religion and omens, social customs, good and bad conduct, fortune, and military stratagems.
The printer, Marcantonio Bellone (d. 1621), was active in Genoa and Turin, before settling in Carmagnola from 1584 until his death. His output was typical of a provincial printer, comprising local regulations, schoolbooks (as here), ecclesiastical and religious tracts, reprints, and works printed on commission for local authors. This is his second printing of Valerius Maximus, the first having appeared in 1587.
Provenance:
From the library of the Collegio Sant’Alessandro, founded in the early seventeenth century and subsequently given to the Barnabites of Milan, the inscription probably dating from the later seventeenth century. The college, located in Piazza Sant’Alessandro, was removed from the Barnabites by the Austrian authorities in 1810 and subsequently became a state school.
Rare: we have located a single copy in the US (Vassar), and none in the UK.
USTC 4034558.