WRITTEN TO COMMEMORATE MARIA CLEMENTINA SOBIESKA

[Cordara, Giulio Cesare, S.J.:] [Guasco, Francesco Eugenio:] La morte di Nice, dramma pastorale di Panemo Cisseo, P.A. ed Accademico Immobile, con alcune osservazioni di Alcisto Solajdio P.A. In Genova, presso Bernardo Tarigo 1754.

First printing in any language of this pastoral drama - rare outside Italy - composed in Latin in commemoration of Maria Clementina Sobieska (d. 1735), wife of the ‘Old Pretender’ or James III (cf. DBI). Cordara (1704-1785), a celebrated Jesuit writer and literary figure, popular in the exiled Stuart court in Rome, is better-known for a Latin history of the Old Pretender’s expedition to Scotland for the 1745 rebellion, which was printed in the nineteenth century.

Our attractively-produced book carries a literary essay at end by Francesco Eugenio Guasco (1725-1798). Cordara and Guasco were both members of Rome’s Accademia degli Arcadi and deploy here the names they used in the academy. They both originally came from Alessandria in Piedmont. In the essay, Guasco makes references to, amongst others, Voltaire. He had published a work on that author, in Alexandria the year before (cf. DBI). Voltaire is also referenced in Guasco’s prefatory letter, to the scholar and cardinal Angelo Maria Querini (1680-1755), Bishop of Brescia.

Details

One volume, 26 cms. x 19 cms., in quarto, pp. [12], 92. Title in red and black, woodcut initial. Lsightly dusty at end, a very good, fresh copy, deckled edges, bound in modern quarter calf and blue paper boards.

Backer-Sommervogel II 1417, 20. SBN: IT\ICCU\TO0E\145606. One copy (2018) on OCLC (BSB).