RUSCELLI, Girolamo

by Girolamo Ruscelli

£6,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Newly corrected second edition of the collected letters of Girolamo Ruscelli. The table of contents to each volume illustrates the range of scholars, politicians, authors, military and religious figures Ruscelli had correspondence with. Numerous cardinals, Prince of Carpi Alberto III, the admiral Andrea Doria, Duke of Urbino Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Renaissance author Baldassare Castiglione, the poet Annibale Caro, military leader Pietro Strozzo and Pope Clement VII are included. Ruscelli was a prolific polymath in sixteenth century Italy who published on topics ranging from cartography to alchemy. He lived in a number of cities, eventually settling in Venice where the first edition of Delle Lettere Di Principi was published. Another notable work ascribed to his hand under the pseudonym Alessio Piemontese is De Secreti Del Alessio Piemontese which received considerable success and went on to be translated into French, English, German, Latin, Dutch, Spanish, Polish and Danish. These volumes demonstrate the rich social context of Renaissance Venice and Ruscelli himself can be perceived as the epitome of the multi-disciplinary Renaissance man. Scholarship has shown that Ruscelli s other work on Pyrotechnics could have inspired the depictions of fire and explosions common in Titian s paintings (Hills, Paul. Titian s Fire: Pyrotechnics and Representations in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 2007). Ruscelli began collecting these letters in 1562, and Gamba calls these volumes raccolta

• Binding: Hardcover

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