Bonfire of Vanities.- Benivieni (Girolamo) Canzoni e sonetti dell’amore e della bellezza divina, con commento, first edition, first issue, collation: [π]⁴ a-n⁸ o⁶ oo¹⁰ p⁸ q¹⁰ r-s⁶, 152ff., 44-45 lines, roman type, guide spaces for initials, line markings and marginal notes in contemporary hand(?s), mainly to first half, small paper repairs to corners first 2ff., occasional stains and foxing, endpapers renewed with slip tipped-in bearing ink notes in modern hand, contemporary calf over wooden boards, tooled in blind, rebacked, a corner repaired others boards exposed, spine head chipped, some worming and ?damp-stain to lower cover, brass clasps leather renewed, (folio 281 x 203mm.), Florence, Antonio Tubini, Lorenzo d' Alopa, Venetus Ghirlandi, and Andrea Ghirlandi, 1500.

*** Containing the first printed eye-witness account of Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities. First edition, first issue, of Benivieni's Neoplatonic verse summary of the ‘Libro dello amore’, a commentary on Plato's ‘Symposium’, published in the wake of Savonarola’s tumultuous years of reform in Florence. Humanist Benivieni, along with Tubini, Alopa and Ghirlandi (the printers), were all ardent supporters of Savonarola’s thought, with for example, Benivieni having translated Savonarola’s ‘De Simplicitate’ in 1496. Here, across 2ff. (oo6-7), Benivieni describes the famous, dramatic public burning of the city’s 'lascivious, vain and detestable objects', known as the Bonfire of the Vanities, held in the Piazza della Signoria during the Carnival on 7 February 1497, offering a detailed list including paintings, musical instruments, feminine ornaments, dice, cards, and other such works of Satan. The edition is known in two variants: this copy appears as the first issue with colophon dated 7 September, and lines 24-25 of the table on [π]3r.

Provenance: from the library of the Carthusian monastery at Casotto in Piedmonte (1172-1802) [title inscription 'Cartusia Casularum mihi a M. de ducibus donato', in the same hand as many of the marginal annotations]; and several other ownership inscriptions to title and front endpaper.

Literature: BMC VI, 693; Goff B-328; GW 3850; ISTC ib00328000