Rare books, manuscripts and ephemera from five centuries

[EURIPIDES]. L'IFIGENIA IN AULIDE di Euripide recata in verso italiano dall’Abate Francesco Boaretti Venezia: Appresso Domenico Fracasso, MDCCXC [1790].  SOLD

​

FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION. 8vo, pp. 88; woodcut vignette on title-page and headpiece on page 3; clean and crisp throughout; in contemporary patterned paper over stiff wrappers, printed paper label at head of spine; a couple of wormholes to upper cover, but still an appealing copy, with the bookplate of the Fratelli Salimbeni on front pastedown.

​

A pretty copy of this rare verse adaptation of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis, by the prolific Venetian translator and philologist Francesco Boaretti (1748-1799).

​

This was one of five works of Euripides translated between 1789 and 1790 by Boaretti, who also published Italian versions of Sophocles’ Trachiniae and a Venetian-language translation of the Iliad in ottava rima, under the title Omero in Lombardia (Padua 1784 and Venice 1788), as well as biblical translations, political dissertations, and poetry. A staunch conservative and supporter of the Venetian Republic, his final published work, in 1797, was Libertà,eguaglianza,democrazia e virtù, in praise of the revolutionary government which had confirmed his pension. 

​

See Giuseppe Pignatelli, ‘Boaretti, Francesco’, DBI Vol 10 (1968); IT\ICCU\UBOE\037087; OCLC records two copies outside Italy, at Cambridge and the BnF. 

​

[ref: 2667 ]