DELLA CASA Giovanni Latina monimenta. Quorum partim Versibus, partim soluta oratione scripta sunt.

Adams, C-804 ; William A. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence, pp. 242 & 246.

First edition, second state, with the title and colophone dated 1567. This finely printed book contains the Latin works (prose and rime) of Giovanni Della Casa (1503-1556), one of the most important authors of Renaissance litterature in Italy, notably of Galateo – a highly influential treaty on good manners – and his Rime, one of the most important collections of poetry of the 16th century. The Latina monimenta, published by a friend of the author, the humanist Piero Vettori (1499-1585), opens with a letter by Annibale Rucelai, Della Casa’s nephew, to Vettori, followed by the answer of the latter. The book contains Latin poetry, the De officiis inter potentiores & tenuiores amicos (1546) – written before Galateo –, the account of the lives of Pietro Bembo and Gaspare Contarini, etc.

With an added woodcut portrait of Giovanni Della Casa, mounted on a leaf inserted before the title. Very fine copy, bound in contemporary red morocco for the great collector Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1553-1617) with his coat of arms (bachelor) and cypher.

Other provenances : William Beckford (Hamilton Palace, cat. 1882, p. 120, n° 1641). – Henry J. B. Clements (book plate).