Siena, Three rare popular works with woodcuts, 1539-1546, modern calf

Siena

A volume containing three Sienese popular printings with woodcuts, comprising:

Cecchino Libraio. La magnifica et honorata festa fatta in Siena per la Madonna d’Agosto l’anno 1546. [Siena, 1546], 6 ff., large woodcut on title-page, woodcut initial

Simone Serdini [Sardini, il Saviozzo]. Cerbero invoco... El contrario di Cerbero che comincia, Certo Iesu intendo di chimare... (Siena: Francesco di Simione, for the bookseller Giovanni d’Alessandro, October 1545), 4 ff., woodcut of the devil seizing a man on first page, a few small holes in first two leaves with slight loss of text

Giovanni Tordi. Vittoria gloriosissima de li Sanesi, contro a li Fiorentini, nel piano di Camollia adi XXV di Luglio anno M.D.XXVI. [Siena: Simone Nardini, before 1539, but probably later], 12 ff., A-C⁴, woodcut of Siena on first page, woodcut of a battle scene before Siena on C1, woodcut device of Siena at end, lightly foxed

3 works in one volume, 4to (207 x 144mm.), modern calf

A VOLUME CONTAINING THREE RARE POPULAR SIENESE WORKS. The first work is a record of the Palio held in Siena at the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in August 1546, written by the Sienese bookseller Cecchino, which featured bullfights instead of the usual horse race.

Simone Serdini (c. 1360-1421) was a Sienese poet who, like Dante, was exiled from his city for political reasons and wandered the courts of northern Italy. Serdini's poem of despair written in terza rima, Cerbero invoco, is supposedly accompanied by Antonio Tebaldeo's La disperata, but this text was actually written by Il Pistoia. While this imprint is not recorded elsewhere, the title-page woodcut of the devil is very similar to the one used by Lorenzo Morgiani in Florence for his editions from the late fifteenth century (Rhodes nos 4, 5 and 8).

Tordi's work commemorates in verse the victory of the Sienese against the Florentines under Clement VII at Camollia in 1526.

LITERATURE:

Cecchino: Edit16 70082 (3 copies only, 1 in Siena, two in France); this edition not found in Sander

Serdini: Edit16 lists several other editions but not this one; cf. Sander 6739-6744 (other editions); D. Rhodes, "Le antiche edizioni a stampa delle poesie di Simone Serdini", La Bibliofilia 100 (1998), 253-266, and "Aggiunte...", La Bibliofilia 103 (2001), 63-65, but this imprint not listed

Tordi: Edit16 63115 (listing one incomplete copy, in Siena; 63114 is another edition, with the title-page set slightly differently, and with the woodcut much less worn); Guerre in ottava rima vol. 1, 162; Sander 7328