CONTARINI, Gasparo.

by Gasparo Contarini

£2,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

First edition of the first French translation by Jean Charrier of Contarini’s important treatise on political theory, government and the philosophy of statecraft. The first edition was published in Latin in 1543 shortly followed by a translation into Italian. A most influential translation was made into English in 1599. Jean Charrier also published a translation of Machiavelli’s ‘Art of War’ the same year. A Venetian patrician educated at Padua, Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542) was ambassador for Charles V and later appointed Cardinal by Pope Paul III. Among the numerous personalities he met whilst accompanying the Emperor around Europe was Thomas More. It is More’s ‘Utopia’, first published in 1516, which may have inspired ‘Della Repubblica et magistrati di Venetia’, composed in the 1520s-1530s. Contarini’s influential work is a thorough description of the government of Venice celebrating the perfection of its Republican institutions (the Doge, Senate, tribunals and magistracies) in the age of absolute monarchies, but also suggesting changes to improve them. Its readers should ‘marvel’ at the location, origins and functioning of Venice, ‘the common market of the world’, where political ideal and reality meet to create an exemplary State run by the patriciate “Contarini is best remembered for his reflections on the government of Venice that he penned, and circulated among his friends, between 1522 and 1525 and then again between 1533 and 1534. These

• Binding: Hardcover

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