PULCI Luca [Epistole] Pistole di Luca Pulci al magnifico Lorenzeo de Medici.

ISTC ip01114000; Goff, 1114; BMC, VI, 671; GW, M 36577; see Sander, 6005 (ed. ca. 1495) — Donatella Bisconti, Luca Pulci et sa place dans la culture du XVe siècle italien, p. 4-12.

Second edition of this collection of eighteen epistles in the style of Ovid and the ancient authors.

The first edition of Pistole by Luca Pulci (1431-1470) appeared in 1481-1482. Along with his two brothers Bernardo and Luigi, the Pulci brothers played an active part in the Medici’s efforts to restore the Republic of Letters in Florence.

For Luca, the stylistic element never seems entirely separate from the content: his poetry is not simply a form of lyrical escapism, but reveals itself to be morally and politically engaged poetry at a complex moment in the history of Florence. This was characterized on the one hand by the evolution of customs opposed to the Franciscan Observance and the preaching of the Dominicans, and on the other by the transition of power from the hands of Cosimo de Medici to those of his son Piero. Luca Pulci thus swings between rigorous moralist and supporter of the republican values that civil humanism had developed in Florence in the early fifteenth century. This duality is reflected in the choice of the Pistole’s printer, Francesco Bonaccorsi. Bonaccorsi was related to Savonarola. All the books printed by Bonaccorsi are rare and bear witness to the tumult of the Quattrocento.

Sander, quoting Pollard, says: ‘Luca Pulci died when only twenty-two. The eighteen letters which he dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici deserve some fuller title, if only to distinguish them from the prose correspondence of Luigi Pulci with Lorenzo. They are poems in the character of ancient lovers, first from a man to a woman, then a woman to a man, beginning with ‘Lucretio a Lauro’ and ‘Iarba re Africano a Dido di Sydonia Regina di Cartagine’ and ending with ‘Marco Bruto ad Portia’ and ‘Cleopatra ad Cesare Augusto’’.

The painted coat of arms (unidentified) on the title depicts a lion rearing on a background of four stripes. As the lion is part of armorial catalogue of the city of Florence, it could well have belonged to a nobleman of that city.

Of this rare edition ISTC locates only eight institutional copies, including two in the United States (New York: Morgan Library; San Marino: Huntington), three in Italy, one in Ireland and two in Great Britain (one of which is incomplete).

Some foxing to the first two leaves, else a good copy of this rare incunabula.