A rare, early Venetian edition of Machiavelli’s Discorsi. A critical commentary on the Ab Urbe Condita of Livy on the growth of the Roman Empire - with comparisons drawn by Machiavelli between Rome and the political situation in Florence - the work is divided into three parts: the first deals with the foundation, constitution and stabilisation of a developing state; the second, state expansion; and the third, the pursuit of stability in peacetime and conflict.
Machiavelli began to write the Discorsi in 1513 when he was sent into exile, and completed it in 1517; it was first printed in Rome in 1531 (Antonio Blado). A Florentine edition was printed, hot on the heels of the Roman, in the same year, and the first Venetian edition was published just a year later in 1532, from the presses of Nicolini da Sabio. There was as great an appetite in Venice for the Discorsi as for the Principe, perhaps greater; the model of political system the Prince dealt with – the acquisition and consolidation of power in the hands of a single sovereign – appealed less to a Venetian audience than the republicanism at the centre of the Discorsi (Bertelli & Innocenti, 50).
The first Aldine edition of the Discorsi was printed in the same year as da Trino’s edition, and there does not appear to be consensus regarding precedence, though Bertelli & Innocenti state that Comin da Trino’s edition followed that of Aldus, and is based on the text of the Zanetti edition of 1537 (B&I, 51). The present edition is considered to be the first, with the woodcut portrait of Machiavelli on the title page, and the basis for the woodcut image on the title pages of the so-called ‘testina’ editions of the seventeenth century (see Gamba).
There is a further, interesting typographical detail to the title page; the impressions of the initials ‘N’ and ‘M’ here appear to have been so strong when printed that they’ve weakened the paper, to the extent that there are visible areas of ‘stressed’ paper around each initial. Other copies to which we’ve compared this one - including the version digitised on google books - show the same printing-house quirk. Perhaps it is the result of the paper between the initials being unsupported in the first run through the press - leaving space for the woodcut portrait, added during a second run - meaning that those two pieces of type, under an ordinary amount of pressure on the press, acted almost as punches.
Crude repair to lower corner of f.144 in modern paper.
Provenance: on verso of title is written in Greek ‘en toi theoi pepoithos aristos oikodomemetes’ (I have trusted in the Lord who is the best builder of an house’ and in Latin ‘Confisus domino sibi ferrea moenia struxit/ Quae manus hostilis frangere nulla > potest’ (Trusting in the Lord he has built iron walls which the hand of the enemy cannot break’). Both seem a type of variation of Psalm 126 -Nisi Dominus.
CNCE 46649. Bertelli & Innocenti, 51. Gamba, 605. BMSTC (Italian), 400. Not in Adams.
