Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

[NAPOLEONIC ACADEMY, LUCCA]. PROSA E RIME in occasione di celebrarsi con istraordinaria pompa dall’ Accademia Napoleone il fausto avvenimento della nascita dell’ imperiale principe ereditario Girolamo Carlo recitate nella solenne adunanza del giorno 29 luglio 1810. Lucca: presso Francesco Bertini, MDCCCX [1810]. £385

 

FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. 24; occasional marking and foxing to head of final leaf, not affecting text, otherwise largely clean and crisp throughout; in contemporary red boards; marking and occasional hole in paper on both covers, and corners bumped and worn.

 

Rare collection of works in prose and verse recited at the meeting held at the Accademia Napoleone in Lucca to celebrate the birth of Napoleon’s nephew Jérôme Charles Baciocchi, the son of his sister Elisa who had two weeks previously had her investiture as the new Princess of Lucca.The academy has gone through several guises since the first recorded meetings in 1584, and until 1805 and the arrival of the French was known as the Accademia degli Oscuri, based from 1780 in the monastery of San Frediano, which was also to accommodate the University of Lucca in 1785. In keeping with its traditions of attracting prominent figures in both the arts and sciences, the renamed Accademia Napoleone counted among its members the likes of Canova, Volta, and Teresa Bandettini, although it reverted to its former name in 1814, until 1819 when it became the Real accademia lucchese. It continues to this day as the Accademia lucchese di scienze, lettere e arti.

 

The poems in the present volume include sonnets by Luigi Matteucci (1772-1841), who had just been appointed as one of the two ministers in charge of the new Lucca principality, and the historian Tommaso Felice Trenta (1745-1836), as well as an ode to Hope by Alessandro Ottolini. Alas the hope placed in the new prince was in vain, as he died in Paris at the age of only nine months.

 

OCLC records five copies, at BnF, Bremen, the Werner Oechslin library, ARCO, and NYPL.

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