A handsome copy of the third Giolito edition of Boccaccio’s Decameron, from the library of a former Bletchley Park codebreaker and Monuments Man, Major Giles H. Robinson (1913-1987).
Attractively printed, and illustrated with woodcuts designed especially for this edition - Giolito’s ‘second set’ (Mortimer, 71) - Giolito dedicates the work to the Dauphine of France Catherine de Medici, ‘ornament of Florence, and of all great women’, and writes how the work is both appropriate and was originally intended for, a female readership: ‘che materie piacevoli contiene, & per la maggiore parte di Donne & per cagion di Donne dal suo Auttore fu composto’.
Giolito’s dedication to Catherine here, and to other significant female figures in other works that issued from his presses, has been understood as evidence of the printer’s self-promotion as ‘a devoted defender of women’ in the context of the querelle des femmes debates of the early modern period (Dialeti, p.6). That Boccaccio’s writing appealed to women “was a literary commonplace originating in Boccaccio himself, who dedicated De mulieribus claris to Andrea Acciaiuoli, Countess of Altavilla, and addressed both the Decameron and Fiammetta to women readers. In the sixteenth century, editions of Boccaccio’s works were often dedicated to women or addressed to female readers. …At the same time, Boccaccio’s works, especially the Decameron, were broadly regarded as pernicious readings for women” (Dialeti, p.20).
Following Giolito’s introduction are Lodovico Dolce’s sonnet in praise of Boccaccio and a life of Boccaccio by Francesco Sansovino, who also compiled the accompanying Dichiaratione at the rear of the volume, which provides further notes and explainers for the language, proverbs and references to historical figures and places in the Decameron. It includes a handy guide to the noble houses of Florence, arranged by their Guelph or Ghibelline allegiance; and a thesaurus-style glossary of vocabulary. In his preface to this shorter accompaniment, Giolito refers to a new edition of Petrarch shortly to be printed, ‘more correct than any so far printed’; it would arrive the following year, in 1547.
Provenance: 1. Marginal note in Latin in early hand to outer blank margin of p.223, an epitaph on the reunion of doomed lovers in death (‘Ò violens, sed per multis optabile fatum’). 2. Inked inscription to front free endpaper of Giles Robertson, dated 8.xii.42. Major Giles H. Robertson (1913-1987) was an art historian, professor and expert on Italian Renaissance art. After studying Classics at Oxford and a grand tour of Italy, he became personal assistant to the director of the Fitzwilliam Library, Cambridge, before being drafted into the British Army during the Second World War. “He was then transferred in July 1941 to the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, the location of secret British operations to decode Nazi encryptions, most famously the ENIGMA code. Following the end of hostilities, he applied for service with the British MFAA and was assigned to the MFAA Branch of the Control Commission for Germany- British Element. Robertson conducted inspections of several churches, museums, archives, and castles in the region of Westphalia, Germany, including Schloss Rheda, where he reported that three hundred documents belonging to the Prussian State Archives had been looted by billeting Allied soldiers. In September 1945 he supervised the evacuation of paintings belonging to the Landmuseum Münster from repositories in Vörden and Corvey to safety at Schloss Nordkirchen…
Following his return to England in late 1946, Robertson began a long career as a popular professor of Italian art at Edinburgh University in Scotland, and wrote on several Renaissance artists and their work” (Monuments Men & Women Foundation [online access]).
The date of the inscription here would suggest Major Robertson purchased this volume during his time at Bletchley.
Adams, B2151. Edit16 CNCE 6312. See Mortimer, Italian no.71 & 72 (Giolito 1550 and 1552 editions).
