Tromba, Guerre battaglie nuovamente fatte in Provenza, Perugia, 1525, later morocco, D'Essling copy

TROMBA, FRANCESCO

Guerre battaglie nuo[va]mente fatte in Provenza, a Marsiglia, & a Oses, con la rotta che ha dato el Signor Renzo da Cerre col Signor Federico da Bozza alli Spagnioli per mare, e per terra, & della venuta del Re per insino a Milano, & altre terre della Lombardia, Con una prophetia aparsa al Re de Bertagna, laqual manifesta molte cose de questo anno che ha davenire mai piu audite. (Perugia: Niccolò Zoppino, 1525)

8vo (144 x 96mm.), 10 leaves, A⁴ B² C⁴, woodcut illustration on title-page, tan crushed morocco by Lortic, Essling arms gilt on covers and monogram on spine, gilt edges, washed, a few leaves repaired at foot with slight loss of text, ?lacking B2-3?

ONE OF TWO SURVIVING COPIES of this heroic poem, composed by Francesco Tromba and dedicated to Felice Orsini, natural daughter of Julius II and the wife of Gian Giordano Orsini. It was written around the time of the Battle of Pavia, which ended so disastrously for the French. The poem relates events of the wars in Italy (invaded by the French in 1494), where two Italian generals, Renzo da Ceri (who was later to lead the unsuccessful defence of Rome in 1527) and the condottiere Federico Gonzaga da Bozzola engaged the Imperial forces ("li Spagnioli") in southern France on behalf of the French. Ceri led the defence of Marseilles in 1524 against Imperial troops, and shortly afterwards brought his troops to Italy along the western coast to join up with the Duke of Albany at Lucca.

The woodcut on the title-page depicts a mounted trumpeter between two ranks of cavalry, one of which has a banner with the French fleurs-de-lys, with a walled town in the background and a cannon with shot in the foreground.

Zoppino was a Venetian bookseller who commissioned works from printers in various central Italian towns, in particular Perugia. According to Giovanni Battista Vermiglioli, this particular work was commissioned from the Perugian printer Girolamo Cartolaro (Biografie degli scrittori perugini, 1829, p.298). Vermiglioli saw a copy in the library of Annibale Mariotti in Perugia, which was absorbed into the Biblioteca Augusta of Perugia in 1867, though that copy is not recorded in their library catalogue or in Edit16.

LITERATURE:

Edit16 63063 (as a 12mo, no copy listed); Sander 7385 (this copy); Bussi, Guerre in ottava rima (1988), I 151

PROVENANCE:

Victor Masséna, Prince d'Essling (1799-1865), arms on binding, his sale, Hoepli, Zürich, 15-17 May 1939, lot 277; Jepson, armorial bookplate; extract from an English sale catalogue loosely inserted, no. 121, price £45

Richard Heber's library (sold 1834-1836) contained other similarly rare poems by Tromba; this particular one has not been found in his sale catalogues, but the Prince d'Essling bought many books from Heber's library, and it is not impossible that this work formed part of another volume and was bound separately by Essling.