CASTIGLIONE, Baldassarre. Il libro del cortigiano.

Octavo (157x100 mm.), [5] l., 195 l., [8] l. Woodcut printer's device on first and last leaves. Contemporary limp vellum with manuscript title on spine. A worm trail in the lower white margin of few leaves, not affecting the printed text, two old ownership inscriptions on title-page, some wear to binding, overall a good copy.

Second Aldine edition of Baldassar Castiglione's main work, providing a text revised on the basis of the original manuscripts and including, for the first time, three final indexes (“Cette édition très jolie, revue avec soin, et la première qui ait un Index, me semble la meilleure que les Aldes aient donnée de ce livre”, Renouard, p. 140). This four-book dialogue, ideally taking place in 1506 at the court of Urbino, under Duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and Duchess Elisabetta Gonzaga, is the first modern guide to courtly life; while sketching the moral and cultural characters of the aristocratic courtier, it defines an ideological code that transfigures the reality of political, economic, and social structures on which early Sixteenth-century courts were based in an universal model. Unquestionably one of the masterpieces of Italian Renaissance, Il libro del Cortegiano was published for the first time in 1528 and enjoyed enormous fortune all over Europe throughout the Modern Epoch, from the very beginning till the end of the ancien régime.