Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

Goldoni’s patron’s daughter takes the habit 

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[GOLDONI, Carlo et al]. RACCOLTA DI VARI POETICI COMPONIMENTI in occasione che la nobil donna Chiara Falier veste l’abito dell’ordine agostiniano nel monistero di Santa Marta prenendo il nome di Maria Angelica. Umiliata a sua eccelenza il signor Giovanni Falier padre della candidata dal Dottore Carlo Goldoni. In Venezia: Per Giuseppe Bettinelli, MDCCLII [1752]. SOLD

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FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. LXXIX; woodcut vignette on title-page, initials, and head- and tailpieces; aside from light marking to gutter of title-page, clean and crisp throughout; in contemporary block-printed patterned wrappers; very slight wear to extremities but still a lovely copy.

 

A very good copy of this rare collection of poems marking the clothing in the Augustinian habit of Chiara Falier, the daughter of the Venetian senator and patron of the arts Giovanni Falier.

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Falier was notable both for his patronage of Canova and for that of Carlo Goldoni, and this is one of two publications of Goldoni’s to mark Chiara’s clothing at the Monastery of Santa Marta, in Dorsoduro; the other, I riti e le cerimonie nella vestizione dell’abito monacale. Stanze in occasione che la nobil donna Marina Falier veste l’abito di Sant’Agostino nel venerando monastero di Santa Maria, includes a verse description of the ceremonies surrounding the investiture (including referring to the new nun as a ‘vittima’), while the present work follows the long-established tradition of gathering poems, largely but not exclusively sonnets, both from literary-minded local nobles and dignitaries but from established poets, many of whom were members of literary academies such as the Arcadians. Among the contributors: the Ferrara poet Jacopo Agnelli (1703-1799), Pietro Chiari (1712-1785), and Tommaso de Martinis, who concludes the volume with verses in French, Hebrew, and Greek. Goldoni himself provides a prefatory epistle, unusually for him in Alexandrian verse, addressed to Falier. 

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Not in OCLC; SBN records copies at the Biblioteca nazionale centrale in Florence and the University of Turin. 

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