ALUNNO, Francesco.

by Francesco Alunno

£13,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

.Attractive second edition, improved and enlarged, of Alunno s important concordance of Petrarch s vocabulary, handsomely bound for the English diplomat and bibliophile Sir William Pickering (1516 1575). Pickering was Knight Marshal to Henry VIII ( ) He was educated at Cambridge. In 1539 he was a Gentleman in Waiting to Henry VIII and is said to have served in the war at Calais. He was knighted at the coronation of Edward VI, and sent on a special embassy to France in 1551. Later that year he returned to Paris as a permanent Ambassador, being recalled a month after Mary s accession in 1553. Involved in plots against the Spanish marriage, he found it prudent to travel in Italy and Germany, returning in 1555. Elizabeth employed him as her ambassador to the Netherlands and Germany in 1558 1559, and he was even mentioned as a possible husband for the Queen. (BAB, Pickering, William, Sir). Pickering was a noted collector with a particular taste for Italian books these constitute the majority of his surviving library many of which he probably acquired during a trip to Venice in the 1550s. . .Francesco Alunno (or De Bailo, 1485-1556) was an Italian grammarian and writer of Ferrara. While working as a teacher of arithmetic and calligraphy in Udine and then in Venice, Alunno composed and published a series of impressive lexicographic works, culminating in his La fabbrica del mondo a comprehensive vocabulary of Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio and other Italian writers. Le osservationi sopra

• Binding: Hardcover

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