Flora overo cultura di fiori Del P. Gio: Battista Ferrari Sanese della Comp. di Giesù Distinta in Quattro Libri E trasportata dalla lingua Latina nell’ Italiana da Lodovico Aureli Perugino
Rome: Pietro Antonio Facciotti, 1638. First edition in Italian, second issue.
Quarto (8 11/16” x 6 7/16”, 220mm x 163mm): ✠–✠✠4 A-Xxx4 Yyy6, 2 binder’s blanks [$2 signed; –✠1, N2, Gg1, Ooo2; +Yyy3, Dd1 signed “D”, Dd2 signed “D2”]. 282 leaves, pp. [16] (engraved title, blank, 2pp. dedication to Anna Colonna Barberini, 4pp. to the reader, imprimatur, note on the plates, 4pp. contents, frontispiece, blank) 1-520 [26] (26pp. index). With an engraved title-page, engraved frontispiece and 45 engraved plates after Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni et al., all integral with the text.
Rebacked. Bound in contemporary vellum. All edges of the text-block speckled red.
Pale foxing throughout and deep even tanning to quire Xx, quire Ddd, and quire Sss. At the head of the title-page, “Ano domini 1659” inked in manuscript and later covered with a strip of laid paper. Ownership inscription to the lower margin of the title-page, similarly covered and initialed “GF” over top. Ink obliteration to ✠1 verso, presumably in service of obscuring the previous ownership. Dated “1659” to the recto of Yyy6. Ink manuscript inscription of “Girolamo Signor[etti?] da Reggio” (likely the hand of the obliterated title-page inscription) to the recto of Yyy6, later covered with a strip of laid paper. Gaetano Fantuzzi’s byline, “Di me Gaetano Fantuzzi” above a slip of manuscript cataloging notes adhered to the front pastedown which (translated) reads,
“This book contains prints of the frescoes visible in the Palazzo Barberini, executed in 1634. The original figure drawings were [….] conceived by Pietro da Cortona; some by Andrea Sacchi, both famous Roman artists, while those following page 98 are by the Cavalier Giovanni Lafranchi. The engraver was Johann Friedrich Greuter of Strasbourg, whose burin technique surpassed that of Matthäus Greuter; he was appointed court engraver to the Cavalier Lafranchi, who entrusted him with engraving a large portion of his own works. Greuter was active in Rome in 1638. These prints, therefore, are highly prized.”
Giovanni Battista Ferrari (1584–1655) was a Sienese Jesuit who, in addition to deep learning in Semitic languages (he was professor of Hebrew at the Jesuit College in Rome) managed the gardens of the Palazzo Barberini in Rome (now home to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica). There the famed gardens were joined by a library of botanical manuscripts, placing Ferrari at the heart of the horticultural revolution, with the land and resources of an important papal family (the dedicatee was Anna Colonna Barberini, niece of Pope Urban VIII). The twin stars of Ferrari’s botanical output are the present work — first published in Latin in 1633, but suppressed because of the references to the Accademia dei Lincei and their microscope — and the Hesperides, the first European book on citrus.
The Flora, here translated by Ludovico Aureli from Latin into “Tuscan,” is one of the first floral works that prioritizes the aesthetic over the medicinal. As mentioned by Fantuzzi, the plates (for which the work is most celebrated), engraved after the great baroque Italian artists of the day, all also in the employ of the Barberini, depict garden design, allegories of the gardener (including one particularly heroic slaying of a slug), tools, bouquets and individual species, labeled in ribbon banderoles.
The Abbé Gaetano Fantuzzi (1744–1815) was born in Reggio Emilia and served as both a teacher and the librarian of Reggio’s Biblioteca Panizzi. In Federico Olmi’s extensive biographical introduction to the Catalogo ragionato dei libri di me Gaetano Fantuzzi, he notes that Fantuzzi can be considered “the first true librarian of the Reggio library” (pp. XX). Olmi is referring to Fantuzzi’s extensive card cataloging which, in addition to descriptions of bibliographical information and edition comparisons, featured Fantuzzi’s own scholarly commentary on the texts and musings on their authorship. In 1799, three years into his position at Biblioteca Panizzi di Reggio Emilia, Fantuzzi was arrested for sympathizing with Jacobin ideals. Required to take a leave of absence while charges were pending, Fantuzzi occupied his time by systematizing his private library, resulting in a painstakingly detailed catalog of approximately 1,200 works by 800 authors. This catalog was meant for his personal reference but was published by Pàtron Press in 2004 and has since become standard reference for bibliophiles. Omni writes that, to this day, anyone who has consulted the collections of the Panizzi Library is sure to encounter a tipped in manuscript slip of thoughtful insight regarding the work at hand — a ubiquitous sight given the staggering 50,000 tomes Fantuzzi commented on during his prolific tenure.
Nissen, BBI 620; Oak Spring Flora 29; Pritzel 2877; USTC 4013966.
Cataloged by G.R. Murdock and J.L. Rosenberg
Item #GRM0091
Price: $2,750